A Divine Perspective on Success

What does success mean for you? Before reading on, I invite you to close your eyes and take a moment to consider this question. 

Until I read Visioneering by Andy Stanley, my answers to the question above would likely have been related to what he calls the “rewards of success.” Here are some examples: 

• Winning a marathon

• Getting promotion

• Buying a home

In contrast with the rewards of success, Stanley defines true success as “remaining faithful to the process that God has laid out for you.” Under this definition, success for the above examples would be:

• Sticking to your training routine 

• Having excellent and productive workdays

• Meeting your savings goal each month

The two views of success are made even more clear when Stanley gives the following poignant meditation on parenting: 

“When are parents successful? When their child emerges from adolescence without a police record? When their daughter or son graduates from college? When their grown son lands his first job? When their daughter brings home the first grandchild? No. Those are the rewards of successful parenting. Those are significant mile markers. But a parent who has a good relationship with a responsible, mature adult child has been successful for years. Every day of responsible parenting was a success.”

For our greatest visions to become a reality we are almost always called to put in work over an extended period of time. If we frame success as having the rewards of success, we deny ourselves the opportunity to celebrate and enjoy our fidelity to the work of building a vision. This can lead to frustration and discouragement. Stanley says, “Confusing success with the rewards of success is one of the primary reasons people abandon their dreams.” 

With all this in mind, I invite you to ask yourself: 

Over the past month, how have I been relating to success? To what degree have I focused on its rewards? To what degree have I experienced fidelity to my process as success? What would change for me if over the next month I could only count success as “being faithful to the process God has laid out for me?”    

God Bless,
Dan