The pursuit of success is a futile one. Its like chasing the horizon, always out of your reach, and when you think you have it the goal posts move. I would even stick my neck out and say that its a waste of your time and life to pursue success.
Now that I have your attention
What can we do?
Firstly to define success I will refer you to a very old blog post here it is blast from the past.
Someone asked Sir Isaac Newton, what he had learnt in his walk towards inventing the light bulb. To which he answered “I learnt 1999 ways how not to make a light bulb. Which in itself speaks volumes.
But what I want to let you see today, is that Sir Isaac Newton never set out to succeed (or better put, he never set out for success in itself). Rather he had a passion and expressed that by putting hours and hours and days and weeks and months into it. The success of his efforts were incidental to the passion.
The light bulb was the goal, not the results of the light bulb.
When Steve Jobs set out to make computers integrated into our lives, money was not on his brain. Today we have the Iphone, the Ipod, the Ipad, Bill Gates beat him (or maybe stole) the home pc concept. But still today, when it comes to innovation, no one can deny that Steve Jobs just oozes it, even in his sickly state.
The point???? Even he never made success his goal. It was an incident along the way of him expressing his passion.
Bringing this into what it means for a christian.
I have been around a bit and we know that some seek the “gifts”. Miracles, Words, visions, prophecies,etc……
These are good things to want to be involved in, But I do not consider these things to be evidence of a successful christian. I think they are the incidentals in a christian’s life.
You want to live a successful Christ filled life? Pursue Jesus, live Him from the inside out. I promise you all the things you want will be the result. DO NOT make the things the focus. You will come short every time.
I suppose this applies to all areas of life though.
THO
Powerful and wise words Lynley – bringing to mind the scripture and I can’t quote where it comes from, but “Seek first my kingdom and my righteousness and all things will be added” – It’s not the things we need to seek but the Lord and His spiritual treasure (His word) and the building of a relationship with him, of this I’m sure.