by Kristen Lim
‘Tis the season of graduations galore! Recently our youth group had a Grad Night to celebrate with two 8th graders as they finished middle school. It is an exciting time of completing a stage of life and moving on to new terrain, but also extremely daunting knowing that growing older means making decisions that can greatly affect one’s future. There is also the pressure of pursing success and greatness in this life, and already the youth face this challenge at school as they work hard in getting good grades and involving themselves in extra-curricular activities.
My small group just finished a study on the topic of success and what it truly means to be successful in God’s eyes. We studied multiple passages from the Bible to understand what God has to say about this pertinent topic. Since God is the author of life, He defines what is true success and how to live a fruitful life that is not wasted. The verse that we used as the starting point in this study was 2 Corinthians 5:9 which says, “So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please Him.” If it ought to be our desire to please God, then the next hurdle is to figure out what pleases Him. Here is a sampling of what we discovered:
1. The Picture of Success: Faithfulness
In Jesus’ Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30), He describes how God rewards those who are faithful in their given task. The servants all start with different amounts of money and are expected to be industrious with their share. The master repeats the same commendation to the hard-working servants, “Well done, good and faithful servant…” because they all put in effort to gain a profit with the provided money, while the lazy servant chose not to honor his master. Thus, success (hearing “well done” from God) is measured by the degree of effort.
2. The Pressure of Success: Pride
When we experience the fruit of our labor, there is a tendency to take pride in ourselves rather than attribute the glory to the provider of that success. In the book of Proverbs, God uses very strong language to communicate His utter disdain for the proud. For example, Proverbs 8:13 reads, “The fear of the LORD is to hate evil; pride and arrogance and the evil way and the perverted mouth, I hate,” also Proverbs 16:5 says, “Everyone who is proud in heart is an abomination to the LORD; assuredly, he will not be unpunished,” and finally Proverbs 16:18 plainly states, “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before stumbling.” There are many ways for pride to be manifested in one’s life, but especially in the midst of good circumstances such as growth in our spiritual walks or even material prosperity, our heart’s focus needs to be directed to the giver of those blessings, knowing that in and of ourselves we can do nothing apart from God’s grace.
3. The Passion of Success: Love
The passion of success is the same as the passion statement of Lighthouse: to love God and people. Love ought to permeate every aspect of our lives as we serve in various ministries, meet up with people, and try to live according to God’s word. In 1 Corinthians 13 it is eye-opening to know that it is possible to appear holy, do lots of good deeds, and even be esteemed by others as being a faithful, successful servant of the Lord, but if you don’t have love then you are nothing. God sees our heart’s intentions and wants His church to be characterized by love for Him and for people in everything that we do.
Throughout Scripture God reveals what truly pleases Him and what He hates. It is clear that we need to fight hard to not let worldly ideas of success infiltrate our minds, and instead allow God’s truth to be the authority in how we define and pursue success. God doesn’t want us to live aimlessly with no ambition or goals; rather Christians have the greatest and noblest purpose in life: to bring glory to our glorious God and please Him in all that we do. So whether it is being a student, working a 9-5 job, or taking care of the kids at home, it should be our “aim to please Him” and hear from God, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” And that is a truly successful person.