Bunyan wrote his classic Pilgrim’s Progressin jail. Jim Bakker,
whom the Grahams befriended during and after his prison expe-
rience, became a changed and greatly deepened man during his
years in prison. Anwar Sadat, Egypt’s for-
mer president who eventually was assas-
sinated, found such inner peace in prison
that he was able to say, remarkably, that
his last eight months there were “the hap-
piest period of my life.”
Our decisions and failures as leaders are unlikely to land most
of us in jail or in other tragic situations. Yet it is useful in our capri-
cious world to mentally and spiritually prepare for worst-case sce-
narios. It not only prepares the soul, it also sharpens the mind in
the decision process.
We have always been intrigued by Rudyard Kipling’s famous
advice to treat just the same “those two imposters,” success and
failure. The results of decisions are in many ways up to God. Lead-
ership is, indeed, forged in the furnace, and failure can extrude
the finest of useful and enduring metals.
Points to Ponder
BILLY GRAHAM:
Mountaintops are for views and inspiration,
but fruit is grown in the valleys.THE BIBLE:
My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength
of my heart and my portion forever.
PSALM 73:26The Leadership Secrets of Billy GrahamSuccess is never final, and
failure is rarely fatal. It’s
the courage to continue
that counts.
WINSTON CHURCHILL