Never Give Up

3/29/2000

I’ll say a related issue of mental toughness is, ‘What if I fail personally ten thousand times in a row?” It won’t be hard to go back to the golf analogy with that one. If I flub shot after shot after shot, and I’m not even doing myself what I know is true. I can’t seem to do what’s right. Mental toughness says, “I’m not going to stop trying. It doesn’t cease to be true and right simply because I can’t do it at the moment. I’ve got to keep on going.” And if I go to my grave having failed a million consecutive times, I will go to my grave having tried a million and one times, and I’m not backing off. I’m not going to stop simply because I’m unsuccessful at it. I’ve got to keep doing what is right.

So if it’s being rejected a thousand times, I’ve got to keep trying. If it’s failing in my personal life in a thousand ways – fine. If somebody thinks I’m a rotten person because I’ve failed a thousand times in a row, but in my heart I’m as sincere as I can be, and I really, honestly want to change, and I’ll do anything to change, and I really want to please God – if I failed a thousand times and everybody rejected me as a result, “Well, he can’t be serious. If he was really serious about following God, he would only fail five hundred times. He could never have failed a thousand times, if he was really serious about following God. So he’s a hypocrite.” Label me what you want. I’m not going to quit. I’m going to keep going.

If it’s the tortoise and the hare, so be it, I’m going to keep on going. And if I fail a thousand times, I’m just going to keep on doing the very best I can, learning everything I can, being as humble as I can be. I’m not going to stop being soft. I’m not going to stop being humble. I’m not going to stop confessing sins. “Well aren’t you getting tired of hearing me confess the same sin? Well, maybe you are, but I still know what I need to do. That’s what God said I need to do is confess it. So it’s the right thing to do. If you are tired of hearing about it, and you think I’m insincere, I don’t blame you for feeling that way. It certainly does look that way. I can’t fault you for feeling that way, but all I can ask you to do is to keep trying to help me. And if you refuse to help me, I even understand that too. But I’m going to keep on trying. In the end, I will stand blameless before His Glorious Throne because He is able to complete that which He began in me.”

Implied in all of that is that you know what the right thing is, and you care! If you don’t care, how far are you going to go? If you have a whole different set of priorities, and your objectives are a mixture of all sorts of other things, how far will you really go? It’s just a matter of time before you get bored with the frustration of it all. But if it’s, “This one thing I do,” if that’s your primary issue—seek first the Kingdom—if that’s the primary thing that you’re after, “We make it our goal to please Him,” Paul said. That’s our primary goal is to please God. Whatever other things may happen in life, I will find a way to please God in this. “No matter how many times I fail, or how bad this situation looks, or how I’m viewed in it all, I’m going to do my best to make sure I please God. This one thing I do. This is my goal.” And with that sort of single-mindedness, mental toughness, then you’re not just tossed to and fro by your feelings and your fatigue and other people’s opinions and their rejection and all that kind of stuff. You’ve gotta keep going forward even in your own failure.