Success and Prosperity

I form light and create darkness, I make success and create disaster; I am the LORD, who does all these things.

Isaiah 45:7

Our life is spent chasing success. In our youth, success is a trophy.  Then it is a grade, then money and lifestyle.  It probably looks different if you were born in a jungle in another part of the world.  It may look different if you were born in a slum in the United States.  But most of us that have access to these words have lived with the definition of success as an adult being tied at some level to money. 

Success in God’s kingdom has little (probably nothing) to do with the success we know.   The success taught by this world is not consistent with the success taught by God’s word.

But their prosperity is not of their own doing.

Job 21:16

What amazes me about most people that are successful in this world is how they contort their version of the success they have enjoyed through life as being “blessed” and therefore, a success that is consistent with God’s form of success.  Although some aspect of those words may be true, the unfortunate conclusion often sheds light on wise choices and hard work - not the sole source of the reality.

In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity, consider: God has made the one as well as the other, so that no one can discover anything that will come after him.

Ecclesiastes 7:14

In order to wrap our minds around what it takes to understand how to live for a different sort of success, we have to make a change to something deeply engrained in our being.  We cannot make such changes quickly or easily. These changes can be spoken and then take years to implement. 

This change may not involve a change in your career, but it might. 

God gives simple instructions on how to live:

And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you except to fear the LORD your God by walking in all his ways, to love him, and to worship the LORD your God with all your heart and all your soul?

Deuteronomy 10:12

The world’s instructions on how to live do not cross over - they do not intersect ever with God’s instructions.  In other words, they cannot both be accomplished. We either set our goal on one or the other.

Those words make me wince when I write them.  The painful reality of a career that more often than not, becomes such a part of who we are and why wake up every work day becomes rather meaningless when these words start to grip our soul.

There are groups of men that meet and study God’s Words every day. I have been part of groups that do this.  The focus of these groups is typically on how men live in the world balancing life as part of this world and life the way God intends.  God does not show us how to manage both.  Instead, he shows us that His way works and the world's way does not.  To suggest the two objectives do not intersect does not sit well with most people.  Yet, God's words do not show how to manage this double life.

This book of instruction must not depart from your mouth; you are to meditate on it day and night so that you may carefully observe everything written in it. For then you will prosper and succeed in whatever you do.

Joshua 1:8

God instructs us to meditate on his words day and night, so much so that we live in obedience to it.  How then can we allow the world to influence us otherwise?  It is that influence that causes us to slip back into the ways that are not consistent with God’s words. 

We can meet with others and get much advice on how to manage the problems, opportunities, gains, losses, death and taxes but all this advice, even from the lips of Godly influences, can fail to accomplish anything more than try to distract us from God's instructions.  His instruction is simple.  We do not have the leash necessary to fit new goals into these instructions regardless of how logical such behavior sounds.

We each work at something. Typically our work brings home a paycheck. If the paycheck is more than sufficient, we look at us as a success at whatever it is we are doing. God has a different set of glasses to see our situation.

In God’s eyes, what we have, he gave to us. The job, the paycheck, the life style. We did nothing to earn this. The fact that we show up to work seems like that is our choice and therefore we had a hand in our success. Nope. That’s not the way it works in God’s economy. Our logic plays no role here.

The day I first heard someone explain this was a day I will not forget. I struggled with this for months, even years, before the reality set in and I was forced to agree as my circumstances proved over and over that my own success was strictly God determined. My efforts did nothing to contribute. That is a rather humbling truth.

But the humble will inherit the land and will enjoy abundant prosperity.

Psalm 37:11

The battle is fierce and yet it is very subtle.  It sneaks in when unexpected and pulls us away from the book of instruction.  It seeks to steal us away as fiercely as any opponent we have ever faced. 

Take a look at God's word on success and prosperity. You will see a new perspective of what is all about.