Most people have heard someone say, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again,” or a variation of it. Don’t give up, that is a pretty good message to remember… most of the time. There are situations that it is harmful.<\/p>\n

I don’t believe anyone is totally useless. You might not be an athlete, or straight A student, but you have something you can do. Another popular cliche is how boring it would be if everyone is the same. I have a certain aptitude for memorizing strings of numbers. The memory doesn’t always last for long, but is useful for common part numbers and remembering model numbers while I walk to a computer. That aptitude helped me prepare for tests in school because I could memorize my notes and have them ready for the test. Most of that memory is short term, and narrow in focus, but it is still something I can do.<\/p>\n

Let me touch on one other point about school, failure was not something I allowed. My standards were such that a C might as well have been an F. A B or higher was required in my book. An attitude like that looks good on the surface. When you fall down, get back up. I’d like to posit (partly because I wanted to use that word in a sentence) that having that attitude is wrong, sometimes.<\/p>\n

I often try to do things on my own, and I can give you several reasons why I do. I know what needs to be done\/what I want done, I don’t want to bother anyone, ego, and others that you don’t want to read about right now. The fact is, no matter what I think, or how it seems, I can’t do anything on my own. My talents, skills, even the breath I breathe comes from God. They are gifts, meant to be used for His glory, not mine.<\/p>\n

I do fail, pretty much every day; I am far from perfect. Failing can do one of two things, turn me inward, or turn me to God. I will either try to make myself better, which might involve the help of other people, or I will seek God for help. The try, try again mentality has too often pushed people to look inside themselves. There are countless (I’m not going to count them, you can if you want to) books about doing things yourself and looking inside for that “inner power.” We want to believe that the problems are all in our heads, that we just have to dig deeper and we will find the answer. Nice thought, but wrong. We need God, He is the answer.<\/p>\n

One more tired cliche, “Winners never quit, and quitters never win.” In the long term, that one is wrong, too. We have to quit to “win.” If we continue to try to do things in our own power, it will not work. It will seem like it, but that is essentially an illusion. We have to quit this lone wolf endeavour and let God lead. He knows what we can do, He gave us those abilities in the first place. He knows how those abilities would be best used. Think about, wouldn’t you trust the inventor of a machine to show you how to use it?<\/p>\n

Though much more could be said here, don’t go it alone, trust God. He knows what He’s doing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most people have heard someone say, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again,” or a variation of it. Don’t give up, that is a pretty good message to remember… most of the time. There are situations that it is harmful. I don’t believe anyone is totally useless. You might not be an athlete, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-devotional","category-random"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1248"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1249,"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1248\/revisions\/1249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grfxbox.com\/thb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}