I love reading great quotes from famous people. For example, the quote about failure from Thomas Edison, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” I have one that I attribute to myself, “No failure is wasted as long as we learn from it.”
There have been many times in my life when I have fallen flat on my face, taken a breath, and then asked myself what lessons I might learn. I’ve tried to pass this thinking on to my kids. It is the best way to turn failure into a victory.
There were many Bible heroes who turned failure into victory.
Joseph was sold as a slave and then cast into prison, but ultimately turned it all into a victory for his family and all of God’s people. He explained it in Genesis 50:20, “God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”
Moses lived in the luxury of a palace but messed up and found himself running from Egypt. He spent 40 years working as a shepherd on the backside of nowhere. It turns out that Moses did not fail. He merely stumbled. We know him today as the prophet who led Israel out of slavery.
Then of course there are men like, the Apostle Peter, King David, Gideon, and many more who fell down in a mess but got up to success. Why did these great people turn failure into victory? Proverbs 24:16 explains it, “Though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again, but the wicked stumble when calamity strikes.” The response of righteous people is to get up from failure and try again. Wicked people just wallow in the failure.
When Winston Churchill said, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts,” he was just paraphrasing the Bible teaching on the subject. Most of the time when people have a great quote, it is just something God already said in his book.
Lonnie Davis