Success – An Introduction

How can I be more successful?

(This is part 1 of our multipart study on Success in the Bible)

How can I define success? Is it in reaching the pinnacle of my career? Is it in having the most friends, the most money, the most kids? Is success having the largest boat and RV, or is success in giving more away than your neighbor?

Maybe success is retiring before you are 50. Success might be planning out your goals and your dreams, and then meeting them in systematic fashion, on time, under budget.

We are a success driven society. Christian or not, our bookstores are filled with ‘living’ books to guide you to a more successful you. I just did a search on one of my local Christian bookstores, and this is just some items from the first page of results (there are 24 pages of results for ‘success’)

• Favor- the road to success.
• The Heart of Success
• Grooming the Next Generation for Success
• Practical Prayer Keys to Business Success
• 101 Success Secrets for Women

We are a society who measures success – we are conditioned to naturally look towards success in our lives, success in our careers, success in our relationships. We are conditioned to look towards those who we deem successful, and try and emulate them. We look at the keys that they followed and try and apply them to our lives. We read their books, go to their seminars, follow them on facebook and hope that God will bless us in the same way.

But what is success?

I want to spend the next few posts looking at successful people in the Bible, and see what we find. Since I personally claim the Bible is central to not only my faith but also my life, what does it say?

Before we get started, it may help to take some time to consider what success is to you. How would you define success, right now?

Maybe you will be challenged, or maybe you will just be reinforced, but the key is to be honest with yourself – and with God – then let’s see where this one takes us.

Lastly, remember that God has made every one of us different. We all have different personalities, different talents, different strengths, different weaknesses and different callings. But through all of that, I believe the Bible offers us some specific guidance that if we take the time to read, will guide us to be more successful than even we imagine we can be.