Daily Devotional – 6/20/16 “Even if you lose!”

You should never, ever hold your head down after a loss. Baby the fact you tried, you got in the game, you stepped out on faith and you didn’t give up is enough for you to celebrate your doggone self. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t get the trophy, you tried; celebrate. Ok, you didn’t get the accolades for winning, you went; that’s enough to celebrate. Yea, you may have come in last place but chile; you ran in the race which means your name is still on the list, celebrate. So what if you got the L in your column, don’t you dare let anybody call you a failure, a loser, a letdown or the underdog when you, at least, got off the sideline. Even If you happen to lose, it means you tried and isn’t that worth something. Don’t you realize, there are a lot of folk who can’t say the same as you? Don’t you get that a lot of folks die with their dreams still being just that, a dream simply because they didn’t try? It’s not about you starting a business and it fails, it’s not about you going to school and dropping out and it’s not about getting married and then divorced; it’s about you taking the step of faith and trying. Yes, losing and failing hurts but the thing that hurts the most is not trying at all. Beloved, you have to understand this … You won’t win them all but you can surely try to. Does losing feel good? No but it also doesn’t feel good to live with regret. So you have to at least try.

And don’t you dare fix your ears to listen to someone saying, “I told you not to try it,” especially when they are still living at home with their momma and ain’t tried nothing but her cooking. Don’t you dare listen to the naysayers who are whispering defeat before you begin, they don’t want you to try it anyway because they are afraid you may succeed. And don’t you dare sit in a woe is me place trying to pick apart every little thing. Don’t even part your lips to say, “If I had done this,” or “If I had tried this way,” because you’ll drive yourself crazy and still have the same results. However, what you can do is this; buy another board and start again, this time change the areas where you made the mistake. Grab another pad and rewrite the vision, leaving out those folk who didn’t help you last time. And if this is not enough, the bible says in Romans 5:3-5, “We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.”

And if you get nothing else, get this … It’s not a loss but it’s a lesson in this life to learn from. Take it in stride but don’t stop running because you have a race to win!