ONE MORE TIME

“The righteous falls seven times and rises again...” – Proverbs 24:16

Everyone goes through things in life that can potentially knock them down. No one however becomes a failure for falling; you only become a failure when you fail to rise again!

The word of God warns us to expect life challenges. Obstacles and oppositions will trip us, but we only truly fail when we quit trying to get it right. A righteous person may fall seven times but finds strength and courage in the Word to rise again each time and get on with life.

David faced a lot of opposition and disappointments in his quest to take his rightful place on the throne, but he never gave up trying. At one time his enemies ravaged his base at Ziklag and took his family and those of his men captive. Those men who had loyally fought alongside with him are now disillusioned and threaten to stone him to death. David however did not see this as the end of the road for him: he encouraged himself in the LORD his God.[i]

David fell but did not stay down! He encouraged himself, he got back up again, and led out his men to get their families back. The righteous never quits but presses on with strong confidence in the Lord. This is the will of God.

Don’t count yourself a failure in a area of life yet. Learn from your mistakes; get back up to your feet one more time – the grace of God is sufficient for you!

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[i] 1 Samuel 30:6

FIRST THINGS FIRST

“Finish your outdoor work and get your fields ready; after that, build your house”. (Proverbs 24:27)

There is order in life. No successful completion can emerge from an ill-conceived foundation. God is not the author of confusion.

The wisdom of the passage of our focus in today’s reflection is this: It impresses upon us the value of carefully planning and organising our day as opposed to simply jumping at the first thing that grabs our attention. There is a time for everything and each must be done in its proper season.

First, get the fields ready and get all the outdoor preparation for cultivation done as the planting season approaches. Next, it is then time to build the house. The implication is obvious: God is interested in how we use our time.

God challenges us to daily set our priorities right. Failing this, we will find ourselves jumping from one thing to the next without any goal, and at the end of the day, our busyness would not have translated to anything of significance. Like a farmer who builds when he should be preparing the field, when harvest time comes he will have nothing to store because he missed the planting season.

Ask the Holy Spirit to help you today to organise your thoughts, time, and priorities so that at the end of the day you would be satisfied in the knowledge that you have redeemed the time and done first things first!