You are only a failure when the number of times you have fallen is greater than the number of times that you have gotten up…
Back when the Miami Heat was a real basketball team and not the spectacle it is today, Dwayne Wade was considered the best player in the league. After winning the NBA title in 2006, he got a TON of endorsements. One of which was his own pair of shoes from Converse known as “The Wade” — Real original right? — What I liked however was the slogan for his shoe. Real simple, but real catchy: “Fall Seven, Rise Eight”
Although it can be applied to basketball, that slogan is an actual Biblical principle from the book of Proverbs:
For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again: but the wicked shall fall into mischief. – Proverbs 24:16
What King Solomon is telling us in this passage is not only profound, it is also ENCOURAGING! Everyone falls down and has heart ache, it’s just a part of life. However, it’s what you do while you are down that makes or breaks you as an individual. We have a natural impulse to stay down when we do fall. In our mind, it is easier to stay down and not take the risk of falling again when you finally got up. I say that ANYONE can fall … but it takes a strong person to stand up, look their adversary, addiction, depression, or fault in the eye and press forward!
Staying down only further damages you. It does not let you heal. You heal by working through it and gaining confidence each day to overcome! As you have seen on Animal Planet, the Lion never goes after the running gazelle, it goes after the one that is weak, fallen, and hurt. If you do not pull yourself up, Satan will get to you and ENSURE that you never get back up:
Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: – 1 Peter 5:8
Is it embarrassing to fall? Of course, but we all do it. And as we looked at earlier, it’s an even bigger embarrassment to not get back up.
Article by Kevin Crozier
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