Consider this: Life is the best teacher of living truth.

Life is the best teacher of living truth.

It's been said, "ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS". I may say "I believe in you son!" But if I never give my son the opportunity to fail or succeed. My words become meaningless.

The father has to allow his son become a prodigal before he could see His Heavenly Father bring his boy home again.

Too often the silent message in "Church" as in Business is "YOU DARE NOT FAIL" If you take a Sunday School Class and the kids aren't entertained, you're not going to be asked to sing in the church pageant. You blow a presentation or forget an appointment and many times you will not get a second chance. It ought not be that way in the Kingdom of God or in Life.

But how do we grow, if we never fail? How do we succeed and how do we appreciate that success if we have not first failed? Not a single one of us could learn to walk as adult, as we learned as infants. Do you know why? Because as adult mind stumbling and falling down are too often equated with failure. I heard a remarkable man who had to learn to walk as an adult after a serious illness had crippled him say, "As long as I saw falling as failure, I was stuck in the wheelchair, when I decided that each time I fell I was actually closer to walking, after all walking is just a controlled fall forward, I began to walk!"

What message are you sending your loved ones? Are you lovingly allowing them to strive an to try, even if it means they fail? Are you as willing to love them if they don't succeed as if they do?

The Prodigal Son came home to family and to God and was welcomed with open arms - they threw a party, not because he had squandered all that he had, not because he had stained the family's good name, not because he was once young and foolish and fell in the pits with the pigs, no. They celebrated because he who was once lost had been found, the one who had fallen and fallen and fallen had finally learned to walk and to stand.

FATHER GOD,
WE ALL FAIL, BUT MAY I BE AS B GRACIOUS WITH MY BROTHER AS I DESIRE YOU TO BE WITH ME. MAY MY LOVED ONES ALLOW ME TO BE AS GRACIOUS WITH OTHERS AS THEY DESIRE YOU TO BE WITH THEM. IN JESUS NAME. AMEN!