Failure or success? Sometimes it is hard to tell. I heard two different examples of this today. The first was in reference to Reggie Jackson, the baseball player. He was hugely successful in his career and is remembered for home run hitting. But do you know what record he still holds today in major league baseball? It is the record for the most strikeouts…2,597 of them! The other example I heard today was also a sports figure, and it came from a completely different source. It was Micheal Jordan. He said that he had missed more than nine thousand shots in his career and that he had lost almost 300 games. He went on to say that he had failed over and over again…but that was also why he succeeded. Michael Jordan never quit trying, he never gave up.
Today I tried a new technique and it FAILED completely! I followed the instructions I was given, but it just did not work. I managed to salvage the card that I was creating and it still turned out cute. So was it really a failure? I mean, the technique did not work at all, but the card did, so maybe it was a success anyway? Hard to tell at times. Here is my finished product…
I know that saving my card wasn’t much of a risk. I could have easily scratched it all and started again…its only paper after all. But the lesson we can learn from Reggie Jackson and Michael Jordan is important for our lives in general, not just our paper crafts. Have I quit on something when success was just around the corner? Have I allowed temporary set backs to permanently stop me from moving forward? I don’t want failure, or the fear of it, to cripple me from trying again. And I know that God doesn’t want that for his children either.
So, my challenge for you today is to be BOLD. Go for it…whatever your “it” is. Trust that what God has called you to do, he will enable you to do.