You absolutely enjoy life when at the end of the day everything worked out just as you wanted it to work out. The problem? Often that is not the case. So often the events of your day don’t happen the way you wanted them to. In fact, some days have one problem right after another. During those problem days, you may feel like a failure.
How are we to react when feelings of failure consume us? Confucius sheds some light on the way to respond to failure(s) during our lives: “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” You tend to think of nothing more than your failure, when it occurs in your life. This leads to feelings of defeat and worthlessness. The correct attitude is to realize that you have failed, and to put that occurrence in the past. Pull yourself together and move on forward from there.
One Bible character that overcame one failure after another is Joseph. He failed to get the support of his father and brothers by sharing a dream he had with them. He dreamed they would bow down to him, which caused the brothers to hate him. He was sold by his brothers to a caravan headed for Egypt. There he had to learn a new language, was put into prison, and left there for over 2 years. In all this Joseph did not look at those circumstances as failures, but kept a strong faith in God. Finally, he is released from prison and put in charge of Egypt, being second in command only to Pharaoh. When his brothers finally come to him, look at his response to them,” As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive” (Genesis 50:2). Joseph rose above his circumstances each time a failure happened in his life.
Yes, you will experience bumps of failure in your life. What is important is how you respond. Just rise “every time you fall.”
