By Michael Brooks
Brooks is a pastor of the Siluria Baptist Church and adjunct instructor at Jefferson State Community College.

It was a moment that will live in the annals of baseball history when I came to home plate as a Little Leaguer that day.

I was a good hitter but not a home-run slugger. That day I gave the ball a good wallop and it hit the back fence. I rounded third and my coach told me later I misread his signal. He wanted me to stop, but I thought he wanted me to keep going. It seemed to me that I tied at home plate, but the umpire shouted “Out!”

This wasn’t my first failure in life. I’ve had a few more. As have we all.

Sometimes failure makes us feel unworthy and despondent.

And sometimes we’re too depressed to pick ourselves up and try again.

I’m convinced we all experience a mixture of successes and failures in life.

We’ve been encouraged to think positively by Clement Stone, Zig Ziegler, Robert Schuller and Norman Vincent Peale, but these men never ignored failure. Instead they urged us to persevere despite failures.

The language of failure is often inaccurate and sometimes hurtful. We say, “This is the worst thing that could ever happen,” but it’s probably not.

The famous Boot Hill Cemetery in Tombstone, Ariz. has a headstone that reads, “George Johnson, hanged by mistake.” This is a fate worse than a flat tire or a sinus infection!

Or we say, “This must be God’s will.” However, I’ve found the will of God more crystal clear in retrospect, or as Rex Humbard used to say, “looking out the rear-view mirror.”

And we say, “I’ll never get over this.” But God gives us resiliency and as Chuck Swindoll famously said, “we grow strong at the broken places.”

Failure need not be final. One biographer wrote that Richard Nixon’s 1960 defeat, in which one vote per precinct would’ve changed the outcome, brought about the greatest chapter in his life.

It was also true of Lincoln who failed in business, love and politics before being elected our 16th president.

Mother Teresa once noted that failure is “the kiss of Jesus.” I think she must’ve had in mind how failure teaches us we’re vulnerable, gives us compassion for others and motivates us to seek the resources of God.

As Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 12:10, “for when I am weak, then I am strong — the less I have the more I depend on him.”

A hero of my generation is Rocky Balboa, the Philadelphia prize fighter played by Sylvester Stallone. Rocky was a champ not because he didn’t lose — he did. Nor because he didn’t get knocked down  — he did.

He was a champ because he got up and kept fighting. You can, too.