John 1:5 - “The light shines in the darkness and the
darkness has not overcome it.”
Success is a
word used so commonly by our society that we often forget what it entails. Money, power, sex,
prosperity and everything that makes one feel good are often the determinates used
by this world to decide whether or not one is successful. Success, at least
through the world’s definition, is what comes to you after the work has been completed, Christ changed everything when he came into this world and said that
success is not the outcome of successful work but the successful nature of the
work itself.
We endure
times of failure and success every hour of everyday of our lives. We work a
full day at the office, we get the grade we hoped for and maybe even get the
significant other we were searching after. But in our constant and blind hope for
success it is often easy to forget to what we, as Christians, are truly winning
from. So often we read the words, “in whatever you do, do all for the glory
of God” and wonder how one could truly glorify him in all things. I write to
you today to tell you that we can do this through the same means that allow for us to successfully
understand how Christ viewed success in the first place.
We live in
a very spiritual world but often choose to make ourselves ignorant to what that
truly implies. Terms like “guardian angel” are used to express that there is a
spiritual realm closely entangled with ours, yet so many in our culture view
demonic activity as a mere jest. There is a spiritual battle that entangles our
world on a constant basis and as the writings on January 4th pointed
out, we get to choose which side we want to fight on. John 1:5 tells us that
Christ will never lose the battle and thus neither will we if we are able to
fight on his side without waver, this is the success that Christ talks about.
This is the victory in Jesus we so frequently sing about, choosing to follow Christ even when the world stands as an army before us. But even after the enemy has temporarily been defeated, we often find
ourselves confused as to why the world’s definition of success does not likewise
follow.
With Paul’s
words, “To live is Christ and to die is gain,” we can begin to truly comprehend
what success is, a growing relationship with Christ. All things of this world are falling
away and the only thing we can bring with us to heaven, with the exception of our
Christian friends and family, is the relationship that we built with God and
the moments we got to serve him down here on Earth. This world tricks us into
believing everyday that success is an immediate outcome and thus can be
measured by the feelings of pleasure that follows after, regardless of whom you needed to follow to achieve it. Christ came into this world and changed
everything when he said, “I am the way the truth and the life, no one comes to
the father but through me.” We are called to follow Christ alone and to sever any ties that pull us away from that call. Success in Christ will often appear as humiliation
to the world and thus will be one of the hardest things we will ever strive for
down here on earth, but it is only when we are able to successfully do so and find
our affirmation through him alone that we will ever truly be able
to find our success in him.
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