Blessed Success

I haven't met too many people in my life that didn't want to be successful. Whether it was financially, educationally, career, family or even ministerially, most of the people that I've encountered, at some level, want to be recognized as successful and feel like they've personally achieved their goals and dreams. With this being said, every culture has a "standard" by which success is measured, and a particular means or path for which to obtain that success. There's nothing wrong with this per se, but the challenge is that as Christians, we are not supposed to reach for the same success as the world.

The challenge with this thought over the years has been that if Christians aren't supposed to reach for "worldly success," then it's God's will for His children to live in poverty or somewhere close to it. This misinterpretation is not the will of God. A person isn't more spiritual just because they lack material possessions and wealth. Then we go to the other extreme. If it's not God's will for His people to be poor, then it must be His will for His people to be rich! This is where we get the "Prosperity Gospel" and the "name it and claim it" theology. This misunderstanding too, is not the will of God.

The challenge with believers and how we negotiate this all-important principle of success is significant and pertinent to our witness of Christ and our witness to the world. But let us clarify; God does not have a problem with His children experiencing what could be described as "worldly success." As a matter of fact, God says in His Word that He wants us to prosper (3J ohn). God's issue with the church is not us experiencing "worldly success," it's obtaining that success the world's way.

There's a success that God is ready to bring His people into that will "far exceed" the success of the world. It's called "Blessed Success". The success that the Christian is supposed to experience is rooted in our relationship with Christ and the covenants that God has established with our forefathers, the Jews. Blessed Success is based upon Covenant Agreement, which means it's contractually based. So if you don't know, understand, or adhere to the the terms of the contract, then you forfeit the ability to experience the Blessed Success that God has prepared and ordained for all of His children.

I really want to emphasize that the Blessed Success of the Father is not reserved for just a few of His "special children," it's for all of us! But the reason so few Christians are witnesses to this Blessed Success is because we don't understand how it works. Thus the Word says, "my people perish for lack of knowledge" (Hosea 4). May God bless us with the wisdom and the revelation to position ourselves to receive the Blessed Success of God.