What is real success?

When I got saved, I remember this fire that I had in me to serve God, to love Him and accomplish amazing things for Him. I think it is very common for new believers to have a burning zeal for God and for the things of God. I remember day dreaming of me preaching to multitudes and praying for people. Things like this used to excite me beyond everything else.

Throughout the years, however, my dreams and visions were very different from the life I was living. I remember graduating from Bible college, and seeing all my friends get these exciting jobs in churches, becoming youth pastors, or travelling the nations to become full time missionaries, while I was cleaning pools and changing diapers in the middle of nowhere.

I started to really battle with myself and my definition of success. The thing is, I knew I was where the Lord wanted me, and I was doing His will. So, I felt that what He defines as success must be very different to what I thought it was. For some reason, probably unconsciously, I thought that success was the stage, the platform, the smoke machines and the acclamation of people calling you ‘a mighty man of God’.

It wasn’t until I went through a variety of seasons of ‘quietness’, or to use the more popular biblical term ‘wilderness,’ that I realised God and I have different definitions for a number of words, success being one of them. In His word we can see the author of Ecclesiastes stating a number of pretty depressing things. He said that you can have wealth, or make a name for yourself, but in the end, it will not matter unless you live a life devoted to God and His commandments.

To go into more depth, 1 Thessalonians 4:9-10 says, ‘Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.’

Now I realise that God not only has a purpose for every season that we are in, but that He often calls us to moments of stillness and quietness, away from the crowds and the mentality of striving. Success, in His eyes, in His kingdom, is to do things for the audience of one, to love the people He puts around us with every fibre of our being, to worship Him with our actions in our treatment for each other and to live a life devoted to Him.

I can say I am content now, because I can still have a zeal for Him and His kingdom, but I do not need the next big thing in order to express my zeal for Him. I can do that by loving the brother and sister He has placed beside me.