Failure

If you fail under pressure, your strength is too small.

Proverbs 24:10

MANY HAVE SAID that failure is not giving in but rather giving up entirely. Every person who ever faced a difficult task had to work through problems, setbacks, even complete reversals.

There’s a story about a missionary who created a dictionary for people who needed the Bible translated into their language. His work compiling the meanings of all those words had taken him decades. Over the years, his wife grew more and more resentful and jealous of the many hours he spent on this project. Finally one night she took the pages of the only copy of his book and cast them into the fire while he slept.

The next morning, discovering the evil of her actions, he stared into the fireplace. A man of less faith might have simply gone back to his home country and said, “I’m done.”

Instead, that missionary turned to his glaring wife and said, “You have given me a world of trouble.” He sighed, and then started over. In time, he did reproduce that dictionary and completed a translation; many were converted as a result.

If your strength is too small for a task, cry out to God. He will empower you. He doesn’t want you to “fail under pressure” but instead to allow the pressure to push you on to great success.