By Daniel Garner
“The hopes of the godly result in happiness, but the expectations of the wicked come to nothing” - Proverbs 10: 28 (New Living Translation)
“Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.” - Winston Churchill
Alexander Dumas in his novel "Count of Monte Cristo" wrote: "Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget, that until the day God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words, 'Wait and Hope.'"
Hope can be a tricky beast of a word, epecially when we fail at something important to us. It could be something significant enough to where we're honestly afraid to place our faith in hope so we inadvertently condition ourselves to not hope. But often there can be a contrast between what we think will happen out of fear of failure and what will happen. Or, at least, what could happen. No matter how often you may feel like a failure, you are not! Failure can be an occurrence but not a person. As long as we remind ourselves and others in our lives of that, and have hope that we can be better, we will do better despite failures at any time in our lives.
Your past and everything you regret is just that: Your past. It does not have to be your anchor, weighing down your life so much you lose sight of the present. For whatever reason, though, there's just something about human nature that helps us to be just a little bit more predisposed without our past than we really ought to be. Those who look to the past for reasons why they cannot ever be more than they are live a faintly disguised veil of self-torture and one of the many disastrous side effects can be someone who fails at something and then give up forever. They blame everyone else for their mistakes and for reasons why they can never go forward. We all fail and fall. The difference is between those who don't use it as a crutch and those that do. Joshua 1: 9 in the Old Testament says “This is my command—be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid or discouraged. For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go” - Joshua 1:9 (NLT).
Whether or not we feel that we are strong enough or are capable enough, and often we don't think we are, doesn't matter because at the end of the day the very Creator of the Universe KNOWS that we are!