THE POINT IS . . . Failure!

In our success-driven world, people often fear failure. Notice that some of the world’s greatest men failed before they ever succeeded. There was a military general who lost two-thirds of all battles he fought in the American Revolutionary War. His name was General George Washington, but he won the war. Another military leader graduated 42^nd out of a class of 43. Napoleon then went out and conquered Europe. There’s a political candidate who lost almost every election he campaigned for until finally he was elected president. Abraham Lincoln became the 16^th President of the United States. Thomas Edison tried over 200 elements before discovering the right element to use in the light bulb. In 21 years as a professional baseball player, Babe Ruth hit 714 home runs, but he struck out 1,330 times — nearly twice as often as he hit a home run. John Creasy, a famous novelist in England who published 564 books, received 753 rejection slips from publishers before he published his first book. R.P. Macy failed seven times as a retail entrepreneur, then started Macy’s Department Store.

Walt Disney was fired from one of his first jobs and saw several ventures end up bankrupt before the Disney Empire became a success. Henry Ford went bankrupt twice before becoming successful and building the Ford Motor Company. Andrew Carnegie also went bankrupt twice before he ever succeeded in building Carnegie Steel, which eventually became U.S. Steel, one of the largest steel companies in the world. When he was 10, Albert Einstein’s math professor told him, “You’ll never amount to very much,” yet Albert Einstein is now recognized as perhaps the smartest man who ever lived. Michael Jordan is arguably the greatest basketball player who ever played the game, yet he was cut from his high school basketball team when he was 15. The lives of these men teach us that, most often, failure leads to success.

Francis Chan made this very important observation about success and failure: “Our greatest fear, as individuals and as a church, should not be failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.”If you want to know what really matters in life, answer these three questions:

• How successful am I in my spiritual life?

• How successful am I in my family life?

• How successful am I in serving Christ through my church?

These are the things that matter most in life. Do not fear failing but at succeeding in the things that don’t really matter. Jesus matters. Family matters. Church matters. If you succeed in these things, nothing else in life matters!

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