EVEN WHEN YOU FAIL

TEXT:* Luke 22:56-62.

*Memory Verse:* “For the righteous man may fall seven times and rise again, but the wicked man shall fall by calamity” (Proverb 24:16).

Failure is not final. Everybody loves a winner and failure, they say, is an orphan. Everyone experiences failure in life at one time or the other, but let failure not be final. The truth is that everyone you call a success today is actually a combination of success and failure in the real sense. For instance, a medical student who scores 85% overall in his/her final examination is a first class student, but remember he/she failed 15% . God help you if you are to be diagnosed by such a doctor and your sickness falls within the 15% he/she failed. Only God is perfect. That you failed does not mean you are a failure, but let failure teach you and not define you.
Secondly, you can fail well by “failing forward” – learning from what you have done wrong, repenting, and laying hold of God’s forgiveness. You can decide not to drown in guilt but swim back to shore, helped by the incoming tide of God’s grace. Peter, from our text wept, but was strengthened after his failure and set to work again by Christ.
Thirdly, our failures do not cause God to fail. Heaven is never shaken by the stumbles of God’s servants. Many of the heroes of faith were reclaimed failures: Abraham a liar, Jacob the swindler, Moses the murderer and David the adulterer. God loves to restore the “broken and brittle” and parade them before the world as trophies of His grace. The British leader, Winston Churchill once noted, “success is never final and failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts”

*Food for Thought*

Failure is never final, unless you give up.

*Prayer*

Lord, I receive courage to persevere and not give up in life and destiny pursuit.