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“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm” (Sir Winston Churchill)
A twist on the well-known phrase goes like this, “anything worth doing is worth doing poorly”. How many would-be preparers fail to ever start because they fall prey to a perfectionist tendency? The first difficulty pops up and they quit. We must be willing to fail repeatedly when we endeavor to do something great. Only then can we succeed. This rule must be remembered by all who seek to prepare. It will also be a piece of wisdom that will sustain us if and when the events we’re preparing for finally do come to pass.
Churchill is only one in a long line of successful men and women who have proved the truth of the above proverb. Failure is not a reason to quite. It often means you’re on the right track. Modern Americans want the easy way, the way that guarantees painless results. But success is not found on that path. Wise preparation is hard work. It will involve many failures. We must not lose heart. The prophet Zechariah exhorts us to “not despise the day of small things” (Zech. 4:10). We must not allow small obstacles, like failure, to take away our enthusiasm. We must continue to press on toward the high goal of wise preparation.
This Day in Church History
April 12, 1850: Adoniram Judson dies at sea. Adoniram Judson, pioneer Baptist missionary to India and Burma, and Bible translator, dies during a sea voyage. He and his wife, Ann, were the foremost American missionary heroes of their day. Their godly example helped to drive one of the most aggressive missionary eras in history. From 1820 to 1840, some 590 American missionaries spread out throughout the world—taking the Gospel to India, Burma, the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), China, Siam (Thailand), Borneo, Singapore, Ceylon, Persia, Turkey, Palestine, Greece, Southern and Western Africa, Brazil, and more.
