We live in a world that is measured in how successful a person becomes. We strive to achieve and to accomplish with the goal of moving up in the world. We even hear from so called Christian pastors that God wants to make us successful and they quote passages such as this one that I preached on this past Sunday. It is true that God promises us success. The difficulty comes however when you realize that our definition of success matters a great deal, and for most of us we have wrongly defined success.
Our culture tends to define success with a relatively simple equation.
Success = Accomplishments and Results
And so success in business is accomplishing goals and achieving results for your company. Success in sports is by doing things better than all those around you. It is winning the race. It is defeating the competition. It is accomplishing the goals that you set for yourself or the goals that are set for you. Successfulness is about doing stuff that brings about a better result that what you had before you did something!
And we take that definition of success and apply it to the promises God makes. He promises to prosper and do what is best for us after all. He promises to make our way straight and to work out all things for our good. And we make the faulty assumption that the definitions God is using are the same as ours. But nothing could be further from the truth. God does not define our success by achievement or results. God does not evaluate us based on what we achieve or how well our projects work out. He does not compare us to our neighbor and determine who is worth more based on the cars we drive or the trophies on our shelves. And God does not promise us success as we have defined it. In fact, God has told us that our successfulness may involve some things that we do not particularly like. Romans 8 tells us that these include: tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword and even death. And this wonderful list comes less than 10 verses after the promise that God is working out all things for our good.
God does not define success in the same way that we do. God instead defines our success by service. Romans 12:1-2 makes this clear. We are to offer our bodies to God as a living sacrifice. Success for the Christian is the sacrifice of self to serve. Success through service. In other words, so long as you are obedient to the Word of God, you are successful! And you cannot be more successful. So if you are obedient and you lose your job - success! If you are a servant and stay at the bottom of the corporate ladder - success! If you follow and God chooses to bless you with a promotion, understand that it is the obedience, and not the promotion that has made you successful. Faithfulness, not accomplishment, is the measure that God uses to define success.
So, how successful are you when measured by God's standard! God help us all to be truly successful as we obey and follow Him.
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