Isaiah 40 : 1–5 NKJV:
God’s People Are Comforted
(1) “Comfort, yes comfort My people! Says our God.
(2) Speak comfort to Jerusalem, and cry out to her,
That her warfare is ended,
That her iniquity is pardoned;
For she has received from the Lord’s hand
Double for all her sins.
(3) The voice of one crying in the wilderness;
‘Prepare the way of the Lord;
Make straight in the desert
A highway for our God.
(4) Every valley shall be exalted
And every mountain and hill brought low;
The crooked places shall be made straight
And the rough places smooth;
(5) The glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
And all flesh shall see it together;
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.’ ”
Faith and accomplishment are tied together with a special bonding agent known as Flexibility. That is the one word that best describes this great walk of faith we believers say we are taking. The pathway to belief and obedience coupled with the “can do” spirit of possibility thinking is definitely not a smooth, flat, and easy path to take. The actual trail of belief and possibility thinking twists, turns, rises, and falls. It is steep and well cluttered with large boulders, and deep holes. Most of the bridges are out and the roadbed has lots of wash-outs and other dangers.
The walk of faith that is required for people to achieve true success can for the most part be likened to the long and wide and most exciting moving sidewalk as are installed at the major airports around the world. If you have walked or ridden on this moving giant sidewalk you have experienced the feeling of exaltation at how fast you appear to be moving. Standing still in one place is not a big excitement, you just move along at a rather slow pace. If you choose to walk on this moving sidewalk it will excite you as you experience a much faster horizontal line of fast-paced travel. The real thrill of the horizontal escalator is experienced when one is actually jogging while traversing in line of direction. If you choose to do this, just make certain there are no other people onboard it. It will really surprise you how fast you can move. You will bounce up and down with every stride you take and you may even feel like you are flying instead of moving on the ground floor. I will tell you, indeed, it is a marvelous experience!
The walk of faith is a moving sidewalk. It gives a person bounce-back-ability!
As anyone navigates their own road to success,…struggles and failures will be common occurrences. After a defeat, there will be down days and some long moments of discouragement. You may even experience heartbreak and great sorrow; yet you must resist the temptation to give up on yourself and your life. Giving up, quitting, or losing heart is simply not an option. Faith finds you bouncing back with renewed enthusiasm and energy in fresh new attempts to rebuild what you have lost.
Doubt whispers with a devilish voice: “Well, you’ve learned your lesson the hard way. Give in, Quit! Be smart, there is no need to keep fooling yourself. You just weren’t cut out for this sort of thing. Give it up!”
But the still, small, whispering, the inner voice of God keeps nudging and lifting us up with sayings like: “It’s all O.K., learning to walk is learning to bounce back after you stumble and fall. Get up! Step up again. Give things another go. I will walk with you. Try again, together we’ll make it !”
Keeping this discussed definition of faith embedded in your mind, you can quickly see why the people who walk the walk of faith are never ultimately defeated. They simply refuse to take up permanent residence at a point of failure.
All real and lasting success is based and built upon a foundation of failure. That is why failure is never final. It is only a temporary situation that can be easily and quickly resolved. Simply get up and begin again.
Failure is a juncture in your own road to success. It must never become a campground. So if you have lost a round in the battle, if you have been knocked down with an ugly failure, or if someone or another group has tipped over your wagon,…get back up on your feet immediately. Face your failure square in the face. Trust in your Lord and Savior to fulfill His promise to you to meet and fill all of your needs according to His riches in glory. Pack up your tent and go out and find a new campsite. Get back in the saddle and get on down the road to better and greener pastures. Nothing is or can be classified as a failure unless and until you personally declare it to be such. You can always start over! You can always begin again!
Verbalize this positive affirmation every day for the remainder of your life:
I have an invitation from God to start over again! Today I have been born again! My new life started this morning. God has given me the personal freedom now to bounce back in a much wiser manner than I had before. Thank you Lord, for all of the help and assistance you will give to me in the days ahead to once again accomplish the desires of my heart.
Ahh, this is developing your faith in a most exciting and beneficial way.
All Things Are Possible to Him Who Believes………………