DON'T BE AFRAID of FAILURE

DON'T BE AFRAID of FAILURE
-by David Wilkerson.

When Adam sinned, he tried to hide from God. When Peter denied
Christ, he was afraid to face him. When Jonah refused to preach to
Nineveh, his fear drove him into the ocean, to flee the presence of the Lord.

Something much worse than failure is the fear that goes with it.
Adam, Jonah, and Peter ran away from God, not because they lost
their love for him, but because they were afraid he was too angry
with them to understand.

The accuser of the brethren waits, like a vulture, for you to fail in some way. Then he uses every lie in hell to make you give up, to convince you that God is too holy or you are too sinful to come back. Or he makes you afraid you are not perfect enough or that you will never rise above your failure.

It took forty years to get the fear out of Moses and to make him
usable in God's program. If Moses or Jacob or David had resigned
himself to failure, we might never again have heard of these men.
Yet Moses rose up again to become one of God's greatest heroes.
Jacob faced his sins, was reunited with the brother he had cheated,
and reached new heights of victory. David ran into the house of
God, found forgiveness and peace, and returned to his finest hour.
Jonah retraced his steps, did what he had refused to do at first
and brought a whole city to repentance. Peter rose out of the
ashes of denial to lead a church to Pentecost.

In 1958, I sat in my little car weeping; I was a terrible failure, I
thought. I had been unceremoniously dumped from a courtroom
after I thought I was led by God to witness to seven teenage
murderers. My attempt to obey God and to help those young
hoodlums looked as though it were ending in horrible failure.

I shudder to think of how much blessing I would have missed if I
had given up in that dark hour. How glad I am today that God
taught me to face my failure and go on to his next step for me.


SOURCE - http://davidwilkersontoday.blogspot.com