Success

The books focused on improving your successes in life are astounding in number and scope. They run the range from “How to Win Friends and Influence People” to any number of “irrefutable laws” meant to guide you in life. Whether preachers or politicians or educators or scientists, the books have been written to connect to the need for improvement and to appeal to everyone’s sense of human limitation and uncertainty.

In other words, human limits and frailty, in all its forms – sells. Untold numbers sell the promise of “bigger, better, more and more often.” The subtle arguments are mixed with the very plain ones. You aren’t good enough without something else. You aren’t going to be successful enough unless you get something you haven’t yet gotten. You won’t have what you want until you see the opportunities you are missing and then you will have the desire to reach higher. The thoughts and suggestions continue until we assume we do need to find out what it is we are missing and then we should chase it with a passion.

I know there are a lot of books with things that appeal to us: “How to clean your house in 30 minutes.” But it won’t work unless your house is already clean or you have a team of 50 to come and attack it in that “half hour.” There are books on “How to travel through Europe on $10 a day” --- that’s an old book, the new ones are $20 or more a day and you better have a grandmother who lives there to make it on that and that doesn’t include the price of getting there in the first place. “How to make your child a genius” is obviously a book that many parents will want to read, but a big part of the “genius” mentality requires both a mental capacity and an environment that stimulates such. It isn’t that there aren’t a lot of individuals able to learn a great deal…what is missing most often is the discipline to apply what we learn to usefulness in the world.

In all of our efforts to follow the “new” and “improved” and “better” road to success, we must recognize that our real need is to define what being successful as a human being is all about in the first place. God offers us insight best understood in the person of Jesus Christ…sent to reveal truth, righteousness, and life in right relationship to God in every dimension. Jesus came with a promise and an invitation for us to discover and embrace the life God would enable us to know. It is a life to be lived “in Him.” It is a life to be lived “following Him.” It is a life to be lived “with Him” … always. That kind of living will mark the only success that will ever really matter to anyone, anywhere, at any time.

So the next time you decide to pursue excellence…consider the most excellent One that we have ever been invited to imitate. Putting Jesus first in your life will allow Him to bring you to true success for everlasting days.