Success?

I've really been pondering the idea of success. What exactly is success? What determines if someone is successful? I think our meaning behind success can be really twisted.

I feel like for so many of us, success is based on numbers. If we don't make six figures a year, have lots of money sitting in our bank accounts, bring in lots of sales at our jobs, fill up our churches every week, or have a lot of Twitter followers we're failures. We think that the number of Facebook likes or Twitter retweets defines us. These notions are so messed up. Numbers don't define us, but faithfulness does. Success isn't a number—it's faithful labor.

I really like Mark Batterson's definition of success, "do the best you can with what you have where you are."

I think being faithful in all aspects of life is what makes someone successful. If success is just based on money and possessions alone I don't want to be successful. I think it's funny how everyone dreams of being rich and famous one day, but a majority of the rich and famous people are some of the most hopeless people you'll ever meet. Did you know that more rich people kill themselves than poor people? We need to check our motives and our desires when it comes to success.

Success isn't safe, and in scripture, it's just as a dangerous as suffering. In scripture, when Israel had success that same success eventually became a curse. Success can be deadly because it can make us forget about God. People walk away from God because their successes have them convinced that they don't need him anymore. The very thing that we used to become successful can be the same thing we become enslaved too.

C.S. Lewis one said, "prostitutes are in no danger of finding their present life so satisfactory that they cannot turn to God: the proud, the avaricious, and the self righteous are in that danger."

When it comes to success— pursuing humility is so crucial. It's okay to aim to be successful, but aim even higher to be humble. Without humility, you don't have God, and without God success is as empty as my gas tank.