Failure: The First Step to Victory

“For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good. So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want.” Romans 7:15-19

“Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.” Romans 7:24-25

Failure often reads or sounds like: An F on a report card; A poor on a job performance appraisal; “I didn’t think you would stick with it,” from a Bible study teacher after dropping out of the course; An almost unbearable silence from our mate after having said a harsh, demeaning word.

Failure - we hate the sound of the word itself, much less enduring its distasteful consequences. We want triumph. We crave to be on top and struggle to maintain an upward spiral. Yet at some point, in some way, to some degree, we all fail. We stumble in our moral life. We make a mess of our finances. We drift far from our devotion to Christ. We easily fall into the pit of depression. We feel we have nowhere to go and no one to turn to. The pits may be where you are today. Regardless of how or why you got there, you do not have to stay.

You may have to press through some difficult times because of the failure, but you can move on. The God who has rescued you from the power of the grave and lifted you from eternal death will and can bring you up out of the miry pit. If you let Him, failure can be the first step to victory.

“We may fail - do fail continually - but He [Christ] never fails. -J. Hudson Taylor