Success

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about success. Am I a successful Missionary? Am I a successful Christian? Do I feel like I succeeded today on Campus? How can I be more Successful?

All of these questions are constantly circling my head and I would be really surprised if questions like this weren’t on your mind too. We want to be successful. I don’t think there is really anything wrong with that. After all, who wants to be a failure?

A problem with wanting to be successful is that things tend to not go as expected. Students won’t show up to meetings, the power goes out at the most inopportune times, there may be bad weather, or things just get out of hand. There is nothing more frustrating then having a great plan and seeing it all “go to waste” because of circumstances beyond our control.

There is a problem with this. Failure Kills Vision. That’s probably pretty obvious, but nevertheless it’s true. We don’t see the results we expected and we give up on our vision. We assume that we must have misunderstood God’s calling on our lives, or that we must have done something wrong.

I think the problem lies in how we define success. I have started thinking about this idea a lot and have come to a conclusion. We define it wrong.

We assume that Success is seeing our vision come to fruition, the way we envisioned it, in the time frame we thought it would take. Believing this only sets us up for failure.

I think, instead, we should redefine success as Remaining faithful to the process God has laid out for you. Rather than judging my success on the things that I can see, we should define success based on trusting that God is at work and that by trusting and following him, He will bring his plans to completion.

I believe fully that God called me to do ministry here in Senegal. I think God has shown me this through a lot of different signs along the way, including the support He brought in.

My vision for coming to Senegal was to share the Gospel with a Nation of people who don’t know Christ, to see a student led movement begin at our University, and to see National student leaders rise up and take over the ministry. In short, I want to see Dakar, Senegal become a place where people know Christ and worship God.

If I were to look at the last 5 months and judge our success based on my goal, I’d say we are pretty big failures. The ministry here isn’t close to being what we envision.

BUT! God called us here anyways. He calls us to preach the gospel, and to share the love of Christ with students, in spite of what we think is happening here. By taking a chance on God and trusting him for the results we are already a success. Faithfullness = Success.

Noah was a success the day he started building the Arc, Moses was a success when he finally approached Pharaoh and told him for the first time to let the Israelites go, David was a success when he decided he couldn’t allow Goliath to demean the Name of God, and you are a success when you step away from inactivity and pursue the vision God has placed on your heart.

Unfortunately we often don’t make the distinction between success and the rewards of our success. We think we are failures if we don’t see rewards of our success.

This just reminds me of the fact that there are a lot of things going on in the world behind the scenes that we don’t know about. God is constantly working to bring the world to salvation.

That pumps me up! Our job is to trust God and leave the results up to him! How relieving is that!?

Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose”

God calls us according to our purpose. He has you where you are for a reason. And He wants you to trust him with the vision He has given you.

Rather than focusing on what is around you, focus on what is before you.

Expect God’s intervention, hold fast to what you know about His character, and give it your best. Everything else is up to God: your success is defined by your faithfulness.