Most Likely To Succeed

It's a little after 4am and the combination of thoughts swirling through my head, congestion, and Taco Bell's new Chili Cheese Fries Loaded Griller have me up working on a blog post.  In addition to a delicious lunch yesterday, I also consumed mass quantities of Throwback Thursday.  This is a phenomenon where people post pictures from their past on social media, mainly because of alliteration.  It must have been dance themed because someone posted a shot of me cutting a rug at a school dance and I got to see Heidi in a sparkly costume, ready to perform at a high-school pep rally.  Luckily for me, Heidi's always has been and always will be glittery!

Nostalgia swept in and I went to the yearbook, an exercise fluctuating between fun memories and extreme awkwardness.  Flipping through, I came across the Senior Superlatives where our class voted our peers as cutest couple, most athletic, and other categories.  There on the page, in black and white, I starred at myself, labeled "Most Likely To Succeed" and striking a pose that could only be described as a cross between a 1990's Sears Catalog with less day-glo and "Blue Steel" with less duckface.  I can only hope that I was attempting to be ironic.  

Besides making me question my whole adolescence, I began to contemplate success.  Pursuit of success drives us as individuals and a society.  So important is achievement that it's common place for students to cheat to succeed or business people and public officials to lie or pursue less than ethical means to get things done.  Often, we applaud these actions and admire those who step on the "little people" to get to the top. Even if we take the moral high ground and condemn those who go too far, we seem to pay close attention to what sociologists would call stratification by wealth, prestige, and power.  We tend to associate these things with success and those that have one tend to have or intensely desire the others.     

What is it that makes one successful in our post-modern consumer culture?  Is it the same for everyone, or do we each have our own versions of success?  What would my classmates say if at our next reunion I told them that our family turned our backs on the American Dream to follow Jesus to live with the urban poor?  Can our family be considered successful by American standards?

As you can imagine, the internet yields a myriad answers to the question "What is success?"  Here is a sampling.

• Maximizing Income
• Enjoying What You Do
• Wealth, Fame, Power
• Being a Loving and Faithful Spouse and Caring Parent 
• Harmony or Balance in Life
• Creating Value for Others
• Financial Independence
• Good Health
• Feeling Happy or Satisfied
• To Have a Legacy
• Self-Actualization
• Waking Up Feeling Victorious Instead of Defeated
• "He Who Dies With The Most Toys Wins"
• Getting All That You Want to Have
• Being Educated
• Not Wasting Time
• Success is a State of Mind

In our relativistic culture, we should expect to find this type of diversity of views on success.  They range from the quest for comfort to the collecting of mountain top experiences; from achieving a zen-like harmony between yourself and the universe to a life spent in service to others.  Material success is easy to measure and there are plenty of surveys ranking people, businesses, and countries so we know the standards for success.  We can set internal benchmarks for ourselves and strive for organizational goals, but is there an objective standard for success?

In high school, I really wanted to be the President of the United States and I studied Political Science to try and get there.  I should probably mention that Poli Sci also required the least amount of credits of any major, so that too may have been an influential factor.  I considered running for the House of Representatives right out of school, but I began to realize how corrupting politics is and modified my vision of success. 

To build the successful family, I wanted a beautiful wife, a genius kid, and an obedient dog.  In this case, I suppose two out of three ain't bad. Then, when I began in the business world, I wanted to make six figures.  Surely, that was success.  I wanted to be respected and useful, someone that people came to when the job needed to be done right.  I wanted to retire early, travel the world, leave a legacy, enjoy comfort, and just be happy. 

Some of these things I achieved, some I failed, and some I left behind.  I love my family, business is great, I'm comfortable, and happy.  My dog will never bring me my slippers and pipe, at least without gnawing them first, but she's cute in a "so ugly she's cute" kind of way and her tail wags every time she sees me.  Success.  So, why am I so eager to leave this lifestyle behind and go to Manila, Philippines to plant churches amongst the urban poor?

Well, when it came down to it, success was about me.  Tim Keller says "More than other idols, personal success and achievement lead to a sense that we ourselves are God, that our security and value rest in our own wisdom, strength and performance. To be the very best at what you do, to be at the top of the heap, means no one is like you. You are supreme."

God convinced me that it wasn't all about me and that I've been changed by Jesus for a purpose.  "I have been crucified with Christ.  It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.  And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." (Galatians 2:20)  Even when I failed him by pursuing my own success, God loved me enough to send Jesus to die for me that I might be raised to life, compelled to live for him.  

While we are looking to satisfy self with the "good life," Jesus says lose your life, deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me. “What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?” ( Matthew 16:26).

Okay, so what then is the Christian definition of success?  How will our church, family, team, and partners know if we are successful on the mission field?  Is it a numbers game like at work?  Churches planted, people baptized, Bible studies started.

I found this top 10 list of definitions of missionary success on themissionaryblog.org.

1. Arriving and surviving — Just being a missionary automatically makes me a success
2. Fitting in well into a new culture – learning the language and culture, thinking like a native, feeling at home, developing many significant relationships with nationals
3. Accomplishing more than other fellow missionaries – more fluent in the language, leading more Bible studies, preaching more sermons, winning more converts, planting more churches, or simply busier than other missionaries (ironically less free time!)
4. Nurturing a healthy, loving family – enjoying a healthy marriage, close family, warm friendship with fellow missionaries, children are doing well in school, husband and wife working together in ministry
5. Living a godly life – the quality of one’s personal spirituality, rigor in personal spiritual disciplines, length of time one spends in prayer and Bible study
6. Helping needy people – Making a difference in someone’s life, feeding the hungry, improving the quality of life for someone in need
7. Completing the task you were given to do — fulfilling one’s mission assignment, meeting the expectations of one’s team leader and teammates
8. Giving leadership in your mission organization — becoming a team or field leader, the number of leadership roles one has in the mission, the size of the team one is asked to lead
9. Meeting a strategic need – Doing something that could not be readily filled by national believers, making a contribution that is truly significant to a movement of regional or national importance
10. Leaving a lasting legacy — starting something that will endure after you leave

As I continued to think about success more and more and go through these lists and ideas, it began to strike me that the worldly list and the missionary list all seemed to have one thing in common.  Outcomes.  We define success by outcomes and outcomes tend to be about me.  Even this blog post began by being about me.  I needed to define success, so I could prove successful once we get to Manila. 

In our Sunday School class, I've been challenging our youth to follow Jesus.  We've spent the past month or so talking about God's will.  Specifically, we've started to free ourselves from trying to discover "God's will for my life."  Many of the kids talked about pressure to find God's will from parents, teachers, grandparents and others.  This is a pretty common Christian pursuit.  First, I asked them who is the center if the question is "what is God's will for my life?"  As we often find, even in the church, we end up making ourselves the center.  What if, instead, we asked "What is God's will for the world, and how do I fit my life into that plan?"

We're using David Platt's definition in our class.  "God's will is to redeem men and women from every nation, tribe, language, and people by His grace an for His glory.  That's what He's working to achieve in the world, and He's invited us to participate.  He's invited us to follow Him in that mission by surrendering our own wills in order to make disciples." 

This plan of God's is written from the first pages of the Bible (Gen 12:1-3) to the very last.  In fact, God guarantees the success of his plan in Revelation 7:9-10 where he describes people from every "nation, tribe, people, and language" worshiping around the throne of Jesus and giving him praise and glory.  If we know that God's plan is already successful, then we don't have to be so caught up in our individual outcomes.  As our Pastor preached last Sunday, we can even be Free to Fail.

Once we put God back at the center, we explored the Bible to find out what God really wanted for us. We determined that God wanted us to know him better and trust him more.  This theme comes up so much that one guy has even taken to singing "Trust and Obey" every time I ask a question. 

When King David was about to die, he gave his son, Solomon, the following advice: “Do what the LORD your God commands and follow his teachings. Obey everything written in the Law of Moses. Then you will be a success, no matter what you do or where you go” (1 Kings 2:3 CES)  Success perhaps matters more about where you are with God than finishing a task or accumulating wealth, prestige, and power.   

Jesus didn't pursue these things.  He was poor, had no place to lay his head, (Luke 9:58) and promised his followers suffering (John 15:20).  Philosophers like Frederich Nietzche speak of the will to power, but Jesus thought it nothing to empty himself, stripping away the ultimate power and prestige to be a servant. (Philippians 2:7)  Jesus was humble and obedient and calls us to be the same. 

God isn't looking to the Christian to produce numbers, but to be faithful.  In the parable of the talents, Jesus highlights the pleasure of the master in the faithfulness of the servants. (Matthew 25:14-28)

In his book, Faith, Chuck Smith says that "Faith is the key to a successful Christian life. It enables you to reach out and accept the gift of salvation. And it is faith that takes you by the hand and walks you from one level of spiritual maturity to another. That is why the Word of God says, “Without faith it is impossible to please God” (Hebrews 11:6)."

God is not an angry boss scolding you for an error on your TPS report.  He is not looking for an opportunity to punish you, but uses even your failures to display his great love for you.

This is the good news of the Gospel.  The life, work, death, and resurrection of Jesus gives us both eternal life and new life now.  Those who truly understand the Gospel, repent of sin, and surrender to God's will are constantly being transformed into the image of Christ with ever-increasing glory (2 Cor 3:18).   Success comes not because of the greatness of the messenger, but because of the greatness of the message.  It's funny because the success doesn't come from what I do, but what has been done in me. 

Therefore, because of Jesus, I am no longer merely likely to succeed, but guaranteed.  "I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ."