Never Give In

“For a righteous man may fall seven times and rise again, but the wicked shall fall by calamity.”  — Proverbs 24:16

Are you overwhelmed by the demands of business?  Has surrender crossed your mind?  Are you tempted to give up?

On October 29, 1941, U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill visited Harrow School to hear the traditional songs he had sung there as a youth as well as to speak to the students. Many falsely believe that when he was invited to give a speech, Churchill stood before the students and said, “Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, give up. Never give up. Never give up. Never give up,” and afterward sat down.

This is not true. Churchill gave an entire speech that expressed the challenges that Britain had faced, including its recent almost defeat.  He also did not use the term “give up,” but rather the term “give in.”  After he gave an entire speech, he concluded with these words:

“But for everyone, surely, what we have gone through in this period–I am addressing myself to the School–surely from this period of ten months, this is the lesson:

Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never–in nothing, great or small, large or petty–never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

We stood all alone a year ago, and to many countries it seemed that our account was closed, we were finished. All this tradition of ours, our songs, our School history, this part of the history of this country, were gone and finished and liquidated.

Very different is the mood today. Britain, other nations thought, had drawn a sponge across her slate. But instead our country stood in the gap. There was no flinching and no thought of giving in; and by what seemed almost a miracle to those outside these Islands, though we ourselves never doubted it, we now find ourselves in a position where I say that we can be sure that we have only to persevere to conquer.

You sang here a verse of a School Song: you sang that extra verse written in my honor, which I was very greatly complimented by and which you have repeated today. But there is one word in it I want to alter – I wanted to do so last year, but I did not venture to. It is the line: ’Not less we praise in darker days.’

I have obtained the Head Master’s permission to alter darker to sterner. ’Not less we praise in sterner days.’

Do not let us speak of darker days: let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days; these are great days–the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race.” 

God will use what He is taking you through to shape history and impact the marketplace.   So do not be discouraged nor dismayed but faithfully work through your trials and challenges and allow him to take you to the end, so He may be glorified by your life.

For those of you who have taken Principles of Biblical Entrepreneurship (BE I), you will know that since 1997 my conclusive statement has been “never give in, never give in, never ever ever ever ever give in.”  Whether your fault or not, no matter how great the error or the sin, never give up.  Of course, you must repent at times, change businesses or strategies, go through failure, but never give in.  To give in is to allow the trial of the journey to break you, to force you to resign from pursuing God’s plan for your life.  It is to fall down on the canvas and refuse to get back up.  It is to quit.  Do not give the enemy any satisfaction, but fight to the end, because, as you are well aware, in the end we win. No matter what we face, we can have confidence in knowing that our Lord has already conquered the enemy.

“Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”   Romans 8:37-39

My prayer for you today is that God will grant you the grace to never give in, but allow the challenges of the journey to draw you closer to Him and renew you with His strength.