When my mother graduated to heaven in 1996, she left behind a loose leaf notebook of favorite quotes, poems, etc., written in her own hand. I followed her example, and this past week as I leafed through my own favorites, I reread this article. It still resonates with me, and I hope it will encourage you. Remember: God doesn't define "success" the way the world does.
Success
Roger C. Palms, Editor of Decision
Magazine
When we
feel obligated to measure our lives by the “success gospel,” we can too readily
close the door to the sovereignty of God and miss what our Christian lives are
meant to be.
The Apostle
Paul knew better. When he felt called to go out on his first missionary
journey, life was not all that good. In the malarial coastal regions of Perga
in Pamphylia, John Mark, his helper, left him and went home, and Paul may have
become ill. So he and Barnabas went north to the mountains and preached in
Antioch, where they were soon persecuted and expelled. They walked to Iconium,
where their preaching stirred up people who wanted to stone them, and they had
to flee, finding their way 18 miles farther down the road to Lystra. There the
people first thought they were embodiments of Greek gods. But then Paul was
stoned and ragged through the city gates, cast outside the walls and left for
dead.
Had
Paul missed his calling? Did he ever wonder why there was so little “success”?
Still, there was a teen-aged boy in Lystra who believed (perhaps he was even in
his early twenties). His name was Timothy. He was ready for the Gospel because
his mother and grandmother had taught him the Scriptures.
When
I think about Mother’s Day, I reflect on conversations I have had with
mothers who wonder if they have missed God’s calling because they aren’t out in
the marketplace being “successful.” They can’t point to great, immediate results
from their calling to stay home and care for their children. A lot of things go
wrong, or at least they don’t seem to go right. Are these mothers failures?
Paul
had the larger view and kept on. There proved to be some results from his
preaching in each of those cities on that first journey, and small churches
were started. Years later, just before he was martyred, when he wrote his last
letter to Timothy, he could see the results even though he was still reminded
of the terrible pain during those early years. He saw the work of God that
enabled him to keep on going.
We need
that perspective, allowing God to be the God of history, not just of the
immediate, as if he has to fit our make-it-to-the-top-now syndrome. If Paul had
accepted that kind of teaching, he could easily have seen himself as a failure,
and have seen someone like the Emperor, the man with the prestige, the power,
the expensive chariots and the big house, as an example of a man blessed by
God.
Our
obedience to Jesus may not seem to pay off immediately. That’s when we do what
Paul did: keep on investing ourselves. It is faithfulness that God honors,
whether on a missionary journey or in teaching of the Christian faith to one
teenaged boy.
