I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.—2 Timothy 4:7
When you are racing, you run to win. And you run to finish the race. It’s not enough simply to start. We have to finish the race, too.  And some of us stumble at times. 
The main character in the film Chariots of Fire fell in his important race. He was hurt and discouraged. But he got up again and continued to run. He finished the race and he won it. Even when you stumble, even when you fall, you can still get up and run. You can still win. It’s not over till it’s over. 
Some of us may have stumbled. We have fallen in the race of life. Or maybe we have been discouraged or something has happened to set us back.  It’s not too late to get up and start running again. 
For instance, if you have ever read a passage of Scripture that didn’t seem to make any sense to you, or if ever there was a time in your life when it seemed as if God did not come through for you, or if you have ever been tempted as a Christian to just give up following Jesus, then know this: you are in good company. You have a good idea how Jesus’ disciples felt on the day when Jesus laid down some of His hardest teaching yet (see John 6). But instead of giving up on their faith, they deepened in it. 
That was a day when the wheat was separated from the chaff, the true disciples from the false ones. In the same way, will we decide to stop, or to keep running?
Shalom!