Holding on Through Failure and Success - Part 1

Former Senator Bill Bradley, who also played professional basketball for several years, quoted Rudyard Kipling in his book, Values of the Game. Kipling viewed  success and failure, triumph and defeat as impostors. Defeat and failure can negatively mark a person's identity just as the deceptiveness of success can trigger self-destructive behaviors.

          A prominent pastor was charged with sexual misconduct with two women from his church. Those charges were the tip of the iceberg of what was to follow, for they exposed the limitation of self-control and of splitting one's life into opposite moral poles, swinging form immoral behavior to pasturing God's people.

          God intended for leadership to be used for his glory rather than for satisfying an immoral appetite. According to  Bradley, all humans have the capacity for success and self-destruction. Yet God's mercy reaches to the pit of failure or the height of success. His unfailing love never lets go of even the most ardent sinner.