I’m guilty.Guilty of striving to please the wrong people. It’s much more composed around the joint when we all just go with the flow than when we try and swim an alternate route even if that’s where the conviction of the Holy Spirit is leading. To be a peacekeeper rather than a peacemaker. It’s much easier and comfortable to give in to peer pressure and making others happy than it is to hold fast to where God is leading and what the Holy Spirit is prompting. Serious question: do I seek the favor of men or of God? God most definitely men most accurately. She will resent you if you make her wait.For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ. There is something behind you on this, even if it doesn’t feel that way. You’ll have to trust that it’s not as risky as you think. Incremental instead of incredibly dangerous.īe steady and courageous today, in everything that counts. Better, he says, to consistently make good bets every day.

It’s when you’re making up for earlier deficiencies that you have to gamble everything. It’s the company that, after years of ignoring the trends, finally has to change or die. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, has talked about how he doesn’t do “bet the company bets.” Because he doesn’t have to-it’s complacency that puts you in a position to have to take huge risks. The former needs a lot less of fortune’s favor to succeed than the latter. Fortune didn’t quite favor the conspirators who tried to depose and kill Hitler in the July 20 plot, but history at least respects the attempt.Ī little boldness now is worth a lot more than death-defying courage later. Defeat was merely a matter of time, so why not try? So he did. But by 1944, the gamble was more justified. In the end, all that was left to Rommel, having missed the moment where a little boldness would have gone a long way, was a gamble. We’ll never fully understand their wrassling, but inaction sealed their fate. Waiting, hoping, cowering, they were complicit in heinous crimes. These were some of the bravest men in the world, men who had faced fire and death many times, yet in conference meetings they fearfully fretted and hoped someone else would do something. Indeed, it was a lack of courage by almost all the German generals, many of whom found Hitler deranged and repugnant but could not bring themselves to break military protocol and challenge him as he hijacked their country. Still, we cannot avoid condemning his lack of boldness against Hitler before the war broke out. It was Rommel’s tactical and strategic boldness on the battlefield that made him such a wily opponent in North Africa at the beginning of World War II. Situations can arise where even a gamble may be justified as, for instance, when in the normal course of events defeat is merely a matter of time, when the gaining of time is therefore pointless and the only chance lies in an operation of great risk.” A gamble, on the other hand, is an operation which can lead either to victory or to the complete destruction of one’s force. A bold operation is one in which success is not a certainty but which in case of failure leaves one with sufficient forces in hand to cope with whatever situation may arise. “But one must differentiate between strategic or tactical boldness and a military gamble. “It is my experience that bold decisions give the best promise of success,” General Erwin Rommel would write in one of his letters. If they hadn’t, we wouldn’t be talking about them. They had guts.Īnd more often than not, they got lucky. Because while they may have been scared, they weren’t afraid.

To do something so new and different that it scared them.Īll the great commanders and entrepreneurs of history were successful because of the risks they took. Not to get stuck on the onesie-twosies of life, but to try to reach. The architect Daniel Burnham is said to have advised his students to make no little plans. The more you put yourself out there, the more luck seems to come your way. The crowd is with you, ready to cheer when you win. While the odds are often against these choices, know that the momentum of history is secretly with you. To ask them to marry you, to take that trip, to raise your hand, to throw that long ball because with the game on the line you’re no longer worried about interceptions. The decision to accept the crazy challenge. To Pliny, the Roman admiral and author, Fortes fortunaįortune favors the bold.

It is one of the oldest and most universal proverbs of the ancient world: audentis Fortuna iuvat in the Aeneid fortis Fortuna adiuvat in one of Terence’s plays ‘τοῖς τολμῶσιν ἡ τύχη ξύμφορος from Thucydides.

Who first said fortune favors the brave