You can fail without being a failure
Category: Faith & Trusting God
Key Passage: Psalm 37
Speaker: Paul Chisgar
Date: November 27, 2022
Turn your Bibles, if you would, to Psalms chapter 37, Psalms chapter 37 in God’s Word this morning. It felt like for a week or two here that God just wants us to focus on this subject this morning. The title for the internet would be: You can fail without being a failure. You can fail without being a failure.
We are going to look at two different places, just kind of as a springboard. It will not be one of those messages where we will be turning a lot in the Bible. We may just touch, but we just want to ask the Lord to speak to our hearts today. Every message is to go to the heart; some are a little more to the head than the heart, and some more to the heart. I often say this: Teaching goes after the head; preaching goes after the heart. There is a little difference there, but both will have a little of the other in it, you see. This will be just more to your heart. I am praying that God would work in our hearts this morning. So would you just kind of open up your heart and say, “Lord, speak to my heart today”?
We are going to start in Psalms 37 of God’s Word. If you are there, would you say amen? Good deal. If you are there and you are able to, would you stand just to show the Word of God some respect? We would like to just try to exalt the Bible. That is God’s Word.
When I say I am not going to turn a lot in the Bible, we will be preaching from the Bible, guaranteed of that, but we will not be flipping a lot of pages. We will not be doing a lot of that this morning for a typical message. Psalm 37. We are in verse number 23. Psalm 37 and verse number 23 of God’s Word there this morning. The Bible there says, “The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord; and he delighteth in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand.”
Would you look over in Proverbs 24? Proverbs chapter 24, would you please?
Proverbs 24 and verse number 15. Proverbs 24 and verse number 15 of God’s Word. We have two verses there also. We will start in verse number 15. Proverbs 24 and verse number 15: “Lay not wait, O wicked man, against the dwelling of the righteous; spoil not his resting place: For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again: but the wicked shall fall into mischief.”
For just a bit, you can fail without being a failure.
You will fall. You will. Did you notice the passage we read there in Psalm 37? Verse 23 calls him a good man. Then the next verse we looked at says, “though he fall.” You are going to fall. I say this sometimes: There are no Christians that have an ‘S’ on their chest. There is only one of those, and that was Jesus Christ. You are going to fall. You are just going to. And if you think you are not going to fall, then you are going to really get crushed because you will fall. It is part of it. Proverbs, which we read over there just a minute ago, Proverbs 24, speaks of a just man. Though a just man falleth seven times, you are going to fall. It is just part of it.
Just about every good thing that I have ever done, if you have ever done anything multiple times in the beginning, I failed at it. I thought about witnessing, this thing of soul winning, trying to tell someone about Jesus Christ and see someone get saved. I was, I think, around 17, 18 years old as a teenager. I was very involved in church. Didn’t have any choice in the matter, amen. I mean, I was—what you have heard it said—I was raised on drugs. I was dragged to church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, you know. I went to teen activities, all that. In fact, I was—I had a bus route as a bus captain at a very young age, and did all that. But I knew I was not actively trying to get someone saved, besides bringing somebody on the church bus and then getting saved in Sunday school—something that is great. But the Lord was working in my heart: I need to talk to someone about whether they are going to heaven or they are going to hell. Am I going to step out and just launch out for Jesus and be a fisher of men? The Holy Spirit was really working in my heart about that. I thought, man, I have got to be bold. I have got to talk to someone about going to heaven. That was hard for me. My dad had done it all those years, but me? I never got it as a teenager, and our youth group didn’t do it per se. But I knew I was supposed to.
So I was driving along in my little rice burner Toyota. I was stylish, man. I had a little station wagon Toyota back in the day. I mean, I was just riding in style. And, praise the Lord, they didn’t break down a whole lot back in the day, so that is a good thing.
But I am riding down the road, and I see this lady hitchhiker over here on the side of the road. Now, please forgive me. I am not trying to be mean. Nobody knows who she is or anything. I only saw her that one time. But if you look up in the dictionary where it says “ugly,” she may be there, all right? I mean, just the way it was, you know. And I drove by her, but I was convicted. In my heart and my mind, I thought, I have got to get to the point where I am trying to get people into heaven, you know. So I drove by her, man, how the Holy Spirit was working: You have got to start talking to somebody about going to heaven, getting saved. So I paused, and I turned around, went past her again, and then I am coming along, and I pull over the side of the road. I know it was dumb, all right, and I was a teenager, all right. Have mercy. It was back a couple years ago—I am 29, but it was a couple years ago, you know.
I pulled over and said, “I can’t give you a ride,” whatnot? And she hopped in the car. I still remember this day. I am like, you know, just trying to build the courage up to talk to her about—you know, sometimes we talk about church first—but I am just trying to get to the salvation point. I do not even think I got to that point. I am over there just kind of, you know, trying to get boldness up a little bit, you know. And all of a sudden, before I even got there, Brother Glenn, she says, “Hey, you got a smoke?” I said, “Sure, I do.” My mom and dad said no—I did not say that. Mom is in Alabama today; she is not here. But I said, “No, I do not smoke,” you know. And she said, “Well, let me out.”
Man, I slammed on the brakes, opened the door, and threw her out. No, I did not do that, you know. That was my first experience. You call that utter failure? I mean, just flop, you know. That kind of demoted me for a while. My boldness was out the window. Witnessing to somebody? Oh, you do that? I am not, you know, part of taking of that. I mean, just, man, you talk about just utter disaster, you know.
It may have been months later. I thought, man, I got it. The Holy Spirit was working on my heart. Now you just feel that tug: I need to talk to somebody about going to heaven, you know. So I was visiting my bus route in Florida, and I went to this trailer park. By the way, we grew up living in trailers. I am not trying to say anything about that; it was an honest truth for much of my life. We are in this trailer park, and it is one of those—in Florida, you have these trailer parks with dirt roads where they have—you know, here we have potholes in the road, and there they have like these holes your cars drive down and disappear and come out on the other side. It was one of those types of things, and I thought, well, this is—I am going to find somebody. I will knock on the door. I am going to try to tell somebody how to go to heaven, you know.
So I am walking through this trailer park, and I found a door over there where the door was open, but the screen door was closed. I thought, wow, well, that is my place. I am going to go. I am going to do it, you know. I thought the door is already open, so they give me a little chance here. So I walked up there. As I walked closer, I could hear there was not just one person; there was a group of people inside. You know, and do you ever just get more nervous the closer you get, you know? I got to that place, and I do not even know if I knocked on the door. They knew I was coming. I am about a 17-year-old, if you will, you know. And it was a room full of drunks inside there. They had a field day with me that day. And I tucked my tail between my legs and I walked away, you know.
But, you know, that has been about 37 years ago. Yesterday, somebody—they were pulling their semi in our park lot, turning around. They had a bunch of huge PVC pipes tied down back there. I thought, you know what, man, they are in our park lot. They are fair game. You know what? I went out, and I witnessed to them yesterday. They did not get saved; they were already saved. But I am saying I am still after that. I am telling you, just about everything you do worth anything, you are going to fail at it. I do not know—I do not think there has ever been one baby, one person in the world that just automatically walked. This just does not happen. You know what? That little baby climbs up on the side of the coffee table, and it walks along the coffee table. It bumps its chin and its lip and everything else on the coffee table about 20 times. Okay, 100 times. Then finally it takes its first waddle or step there, you know, and it falls, and it falls, and it falls, and it falls. That is how you learn to walk. You learn to walk that very same way.
And friend, in the Christian life, if you are going to be the Christian God wants you to be, there is going to be a whole lot of falling. Is there a Christian that has run for the Lord that did not fall a whole lot of times? You know what is coming, the next statement. Number one, I said, you will fall. Number two, you are not a failure unless you do not get up.
Go back to that passage over there in Psalm, Psalm 37, verse 23, calling him a good man. Then verse 24, Psalm 37:24, “though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down.” Can I word it this way? By the help of God—we will get to that in a bit here—he gets back up. He does not stay down. Back over here in Proverbs 24:15, 16. “For a just man falleth seven times.” A lot of you know this, but seven in the Bible is what we call the number of completion. It is a number of perfection. Some might word it that way. It means you have completed the course, and he is saying, hey, a just man falls seven times; he falls as many times as he needs to, to mature, to grow, where he can get up and stay up for a long time. That is what I am talking about. “For a just man falleth seven times and riseth up again.”
I never got one of the doors—that one of the Bible college teachers. Are y’all hot out there? Are y’all hot out there? Stuffy? How about—how about let’s do this: We are not going to turn an air conditioner on, but can we just get some airflow? Would you please, Brother Anthony? We appreciate that. That would be great. And some of the men were like, “Praise the Lord.” Some of your ladies like, “Man, he is going to freeze us out of this place,” you know. And it is—I was going to bring Brother Tim for sleeping, but you are not even here today, so we are going to blame him for sure. It is Tim Dempsey’s fault. I mean, come on, yeah. You know, some of you said, “Okay, we will take that,” you know.
But I remember at Bible College, one of the teachers down in one hallway—you would go down the hallway, and you would see the door to his office for a while. I am not sure how long, but I still remember it in my mind. For years on that door, he had put something up, some kind of paper there covering it. And this is what it said: It said, “Failure plus failure, plus failure, plus failure, plus failure, plus failure, plus failure, plus failure, plus failure.” I am going all the way down the door. I do not know how many failures were on that door, but just “failure plus failure, plus failure, plus failure, plus failure, plus failure, plus failure, plus failure, plus failure.” And down the very bottom of that door, it said, “equals success.” Now, friend, we do not necessarily like it, but one of the ingredients of success typically is failure. You are going to fall, but you are not a failure if you keep getting back up.
You know that little baby, every time he falls and bumps his head—by the way, it is always around family picture time. Come on now, you know, that is just what it works. I mean, just always what it is, you know. Family pictures are coming. That boy, that girl, they will go have a big old knot on their head. That is just part of it. You go to Walmart and everybody is going to look at you mean like you have been beating up on that little kid, you know. But look. That little baby, every time it falls, the instincts, the brain memory, the muscle memory inside, it adjusts a little bit, and it learns just a little bit. When I wobble that way, I do not need to wobble as much. And you do not even know it is in the subconscious, but they are learning. They are learning what to do and what not to do. That baby does not even understand what all is going on. But that brain, that subconscious is working, and they are learning to walk. And part of you learning to be the man or the lady that God wants you to be is falling. But he rises up again. He gets up again. Every time you fall, learn just a little bit.
I say this sometimes: We think—y’all listen out there, y’all with me?—we think, I think sometimes, man, I am going to get saved, I am going to get in church, I am going to get baptized, I am going to just boom, I am going to grow, and boy, I am just going to starve for Christ. I wish it worked like that. But I will tell you how reality is. You get saved. God does not work in your heart; man, he regenerates your heart. And it creates a desire: Man, he saved me. I did not deserve it. I am not going to hell anymore. I am going to heaven. He gave it to me. Jesus paid for it by shed blood on the cross. I want to live for him. And you get in there, you start growing. You know what happens? You fall. And the key is that you get up and you start growing again. You know what is going to happen? You are going to fall. And you are going to say, man, I am going to get in church. I am going to come every time the doors are open. And you come one time. And the next Sunday or whatever, Sunday night, whenever, the relatives come over, or the kitchen sink starts leaking. And then you get out of church for a while. And problems arise. And here is the key: You get back in, you start growing, and you get back in church, and you start growing again.
Let me tell you two keys to this thing, if you are growing. The two keys are: When you fall, get back up. Three keys, excuse me. Then when you fall, do not fall as low as you did last time. And when you fall, do not stay down as long as you did last time. You say you are going to grow, and then you fall, and you are going to grow, and you fall. And pretty soon, if you keep growing, your failings will be where your growth was years ago. If you keep growing, that is God’s plan. But every person here has experienced this thing of falling.
Thomas Edison, that great inventor. I mean, he invented the light bulb that we know it—not the new ones, you know, but these regular old light bulbs that you and I grew up with, you know. He invented those, and he was a great inventor, Thomas Edison. Someone said, “What is the genius?” Thomas Edison said, “Genius is just another name for hard work.” He said, “Genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.” Thomas Edison said, “I start where the last man left off.” He was trying to invent the light bulb; he was trying to find the filament, you know, in the middle of that light bulb. He was trying to, and he had tried 700 different things, and they did not work. Someone said, “Hey, you failed 700 times.” He said, “I have not failed 700 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work.” Hey, hey, let me ask you: Where have you given up on the Lord? Where have you said, “I am giving up? I am tired of falling”?
Maybe you said, “You know, I will never have a sweet marriage,” and you are really not enjoying marriage; you are roommates. And you are not even working at it anymore. You are just kind of giving in, and you say, “I am falling,” and, you know, like you used to say, “I am falling down, I cannot get up.” How many remember that back in the day? Or Daytoners go—oh, Brother Tim even raised his hand on that. I am surprised, you know.
Oh, husband, Satan is going to whisper in your ear: “Just give up on having a sweet marriage.” And he is going to say, “Oh, throw in the towel, you are never—” And here is the thing: If you stay down, you can be a family, but you can fall without being a family. And you get back up and work at that thing and say, “I am going to do what I can to be the husband, the wife that God wants me to be,” just working at that thing. It is so key, husband. Do not you listen to the devil and say, “No, no, no, I am going to work at having a sweet marriage.” Wife, Satan whispers to you, say, “Well, every time I try to do something right, trying to make this thing sweet, he hurts me somewhere,” and you are—you are going to be tempted—you just stay down. And listen, do not do that. Do not do that. Say, “Let us”—we have had some problems, but I can fail without being a failure.
Hey, where is the Holy Spirit? Now listen to it—where is the Holy Spirit right now convicted? Maybe in your Bible reading, maybe at the beginning of the year you said, “I am going to read my Bible,” and you have not read in a long time. Hey, you can fail without being a failure. Maybe you said, “Hey, I am going to be a prayer warrior.” I am going to get along—Pastor just preached on spending time alone with your Heavenly Father. I said, “I am going to do this,” and I have not been doing this. And listen, you can fail without being a failure. What is the Holy Spirit saying? Even as I am talking right now, the Holy Spirit is saying, “Hey, I want you to get back in.” Maybe it is just a desire to have a pure heart. And boy, you say, “I have gotten rid of my lust,” or getting rid of my bitterness or my selfishness or my pride or my jealousy. And you wake up every morning and it is there again. And you say, “I am just giving up on it.” Maybe the Holy Spirit says, “Hey, get back in there. Get up and start working and have a pure heart again.” Asking God every morning, “Lord, give me a pure heart.”
Have you accepted defeat in some area of your Christian life? Maybe it is in a relationship that you know God wants you to work at. You can fail without being a family. Where is it? Maybe it is witnessing, as I was talking about earlier. Oh, friend, do not accept defeat. Do not accept failure.
Here is the wonderful thing about it. Look back over there in Psalm 37, would you please? Psalm 37. Psalm 37. Psalm 37. Psalm 37, verse number 24 right there: “Though he fall,” you are going to fall, “he shall not be utterly cast down: for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand.” Can I say this? God knew you were going to fall. God knew that. He knew that you were going to fall flat on your face. He knew that. You have heard it said, it has not ever occurred to you, nothing has ever occurred to God. He knew that. He knows the end from the beginning, Jeremiah says. He understands it all. And here is a wonderful thing: If you are a born-again Christian, when you fall, he still loves you. He still cares about you. He is not trying to push aside. He is still watching over you.
Notice what he said in both these passages over there in Psalms. It said a good man. “Steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord.” You say, “Well, how do you become a good man in the sight of God?” Well, you know, God’s standard of goodness is pretty high. James 2 says if you have broken the least of these commandments, you have broken all. We have all done that. So how do I get good before the Lord? And I am not talking about a good old boy in front of the—you know, I am not talking about good before God. How does God call me a good man? Well, when Jesus Christ—when you accept him as your personal Savior, he puts his goodness on your account. And then you can stand before God, and God says, “That is a good man right there.”
And so really, he is talking about he will not utterly cast down. The Lord will hold him up. What is a good man? How did he become a good man? He is talking about the saved man. Someone that has been born again, as Jesus said, “You must be born again.” Over there, in Proverbs, we just read that, the second passage we read. He said, “A just man falleth seven times and riseth up again.”
But how to be just before God? We all have a debt we cannot pay. It is called our sin debt. Every person here has sin. We have all sinned. And we have a debt. It is a debt that you cannot pay. You never pay it all. That is why hell is forever. That is why the Bible says the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever and ever. That is why when someone goes to hell, they stay there. It is not like they burn up and it is all done. It is forever. It is forever. Why? Because they never pay that debt.
So how can I be just in the sight of God? Well, Jesus—remember he shed his blood, he died. Remember three days later, he rose again. And he rose showing that the Father was satisfied with his payment. That is why he had to die. The wages of sin is what? Is what? Death. And Jesus died on the cross. And his death, his sacrifice was sufficient. It paid our debt. And so look, when I go to God and say, “Hey Lord, I am not going to trust in my goodness to save me; I am trusting in Jesus to save me.” You call it on Jesus; pay your sin debt. Not only does Jesus put his goodness on your account, but your sins are put on Jesus’ account and they are paid in full. That is how you can be just before God. So when he says, “A just man falleth seven times and riseth up again,” he is told by to say amen, and he says, “Hey, he is not utterly cast down, but the Lord will hold him.”
So here is what I am getting at: If you are saved, if there has been a time in your life when you put all your faith fully in Christ, you are calling him to be your Savior. Look, you are just in the sight of God, and he will always love you. There is a chapter in the book of Psalms. It is 26 verses, I think it is, Psalm 139. 136, let me check it out. Psalm 136, 26 verses. In every single one of those verses says, “The mercy of the Lord endureth forever.” Every single verse, “the mercy of the Lord endureth forever.” So, a friend, you are going to fall down, but even when you fall down, he—listen—still loves you. And I do not want this to happen, but let us just say you felt really low. You messed up. And you wake up, you end up in rehab somewhere. Whatever the rehab may be, but you end up in jail. Can I say this if you are a born-again Christian? God is not going to be happy, and he is probably spanking you while you are in those places. He does spank his children; he is chasing his children. But you know what? Even in that jail cell, even in that rehab place, he has reached down and said, “You know what? I still love you.” You said, “Make me want to go out and sin?” No, that shows me he loves me. And Jesus said, “We love him because he first loved us.” That makes me want to do right by him. But listen, friend, you are going to fall. But you can fall without being—I tell you—the Lord holds you up. God knew you were going to fall.
Look over in 1 John. You will know the verses. First John—many of you will. Now, in the Bible, there is the book of St. John, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. But then at the end of the Bible, there is First, Second, Third John, Jude, Revelation. So right towards the back of the Bible, the book of 1 John. The book of 1st John. It is somewhere between Genesis and Revelation, somewhere in between that, I promise you, all right? The book of 1st John.
1 John chapter number one, and I want you to see this: This whole book of the Bible, First John, is written to saved people, God’s people, just talking about the family of God. It is kind of like, “Dad, Dad is coming in, let me talk to the family here.” That is what First John is all about. God is talking to his family here, his children here. And I want you to see this: Verse number 8, 1 John 1:8. He says, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” Can I put that into what we are talking about today? You are going to fall. That is why nobody has the right to look up, you know, to kind of have their nose so high—if it rains, you drown. You know, I mean, we all fall. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves; the truth is not in us.
Now look at verse number nine. “If”—that is the big word—if we are saved people, “if we confess our sins.” Confess. Let me just say a word about this word “confess.” It has to do with us seeing our sin like God sees sin. Sometimes it takes a little bit to do that. “Well, it is not that big of a deal.” If I get to see it like God sees it, it is a big deal. But he says if we confess, we own up to it. If we confess our sins, watch this—what does he say? “He is faithful.” Oh, praise the Lord for that. He is faithful. You say, “After I messed up a thousand times?” Yeah, after you messed up a thousand times, keep getting back up. He is faithful. If we confess our sin, he is faithful and just. How can he be just to forgive me if I have done that same thing a hundred times? Because Jesus paid it all. If it required you to pay for it, that would be double paid. By the way, the chastening of God is not you paying for your sin. The payment for sin is death.
I have used this so many times. Some of you will remember it. It is illustration number 43. How many know that? Remember that one there? Yeah, yeah, you know. You say my kids are little, we go to Walmart, these big old huge screen TVs. Man, my goodness, they get bigger every year, you know. I mean, pretty soon it is going to take up a whole wall, you know. And these theater rooms, but we are looking at these big, huge TVs. I am old. One of my children, they knock that TV over, and it breaks, and the manager comes and says, “Mr. Chisgar, you owe $800,” and I take off running, and I get arrested—them in jail. But, no, but, you know, and so I have to pull out a card or something, and I pay that debt, that $800 because my child broke it. Well, if I go home, and I—you know what is going to happen? If we go home, my child just did that, we are going to apply the seat of education to the—what is it? Help me out. What is that one? Board of Education with the seed of knowledge. That is what is going to happen there, you know. I mean, whether it is that, canoes or paddle best in the rear. That is what is going to happen there, you know. And we are going to take care of business now. Is that making that child pay for it? Nobody paid for it. But it is correcting that child so it does not go do the same thing again. And God’s chasing is the same thing. You are not paying your sin debt today. Jesus paid it all. You do not have to go to the cross and try to pay. You do not have to go to hell and try to pay that. No, he does not pay for that. But chastening is God correcting you so you do not go and keep doing the same thing again. But as far as the payment for your sin, he is faithful, he is just.
So let us go back: “If we,” that is, saved people, “confess our sins,” we just own up to it, “he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” You heard me explain that. He is faithful to forgive and to cleanse.
We wake up, you know, and Tammy gets the kids ready for church and all that. And one of the kids goes outside, and Sarah has got a new dress on, and Tammy put it on that morning. She is a little girl, years ago. And she goes outside, and she starts playing with Dixie, our big dog, you know, and it just has been raining last night. It rained, you know, and Dixie knocked Sarah over, and she gets into the mud puddle. Well, Sarah is not going to take that lying down. She is going to wrestle with Dixie for a bit and get Dixie pinned down, pull on her ears or something, you know, for Dixie doing that to her, you know. And she comes inside and she is filthy. And she starts crying, “Mom, I am so sorry.” And Tammy says, “All right, I will forgive you, Sarah.” That is forgiveness. But if Tammy takes her back to the back room and changes that dress, puts a brand-new dress on her, and she comes out looking like she had ever fallen in the mud puddle, that is cleansing. And the Bible says, speaking of us Christians, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” So God gives you a way to get up. He always gives you a way to get up. The righteous man—or excuse me, a just man—falls seven times and rises up again.
Back in the day, we used to preach from that First John 1:9, and back in the day, a lot of times someone would rededicate their life. They are saying, “You know, I have been down long enough, and I will get back up. I am going to start getting back in there to be the Christian God made me to be.” Old friend, God—God wants you to get back up. He riseth up again. Hey, what is the Holy Spirit talking about? Is there something that you need to get back into? Maybe it is that sin that you just kind of gave into. You are just living in defeat. And I need to get back in there, start trying to overcome it. Where is it? I mean, yes, you are going to fall, but you are not a failure unless you stay down. Oh, maybe the Holy Spirit is saying you have got to get clean, you have got to get right. You ought to be the spouse you ought to be.
Boy, he got the baseball. He went out in the yard, and he took that baseball, and he threw it up in the air, and he had that bat, and boy, he swung at that thing, and, man, he missed it by a mile. And he said, “Well, you know, I am not going to be defeated by that.” He picked that ball up, and he tossed it up there, and he swung again, and he missed it again. He got that ball the third time, and he tossed it again, and he swung at it again, and he missed it by a mile, and he said, “Woo, wow, what a picture I am.” I am just saying, get up. Get back in there. Do not wallow in defeat.
I mentioned at the beginning how, and still, I am not a good soul winner. I am not trying to act like I am, but I am still out there trying to win souls. That is the key, you friends. Nobody has a perfect marriage, but there is a difference in those that just kind of settle and give up, and those that say, “You know what? I am going to try to keep going after that sweet marriage I like to have.” Someone said a big shot is just a little shot that keeps shooting. You can fail without being a failure.
Abraham Lincoln. Man, you talk about defeats. 1832, he was defeated for state legislator. 1833, his business failed. He failed at his business. 1838, defeated for Speaker of the State House. 1843, defeated for nomination to Congress. 1849, rejected for land officer. 1854, defeated in running for U.S. Senate. 1856, defeated for nomination for vice president. 1858, defeated again for U.S. Senator. And yet in 1860, he became one of the greatest presidents our nation has ever seen, leading one of the greatest crises our country has ever saw. Hey, friend, is there something the Holy Spirit is tugging at, saying you have given up there? You have thrown the towel in there. Can I say it one more time? You can fail without being a failure. “A just man falleth seven times and riseth up again.”
Original File: You never fail - Pastor Paul Chisgar - Sunday AM 11272022