The Forgotten Side of Success

1 Peter 5:1, 5

OURS IS FAST BECOMING a success-saturated society. The telltale signs are everywhere. Check the magazine racks at airports, hotels, and drugstores. Click on the webinars and podcasts. Seminars by the hundreds are held every year, offering ideas, motivation, techniques, and mainly promises of prosperity. Books by the dozens and scores of audio and videotapes promoting the dream are published on an annual basis.

What’s the common theme? Work longer hours, push ahead and get your way, let nothing hinder your quest—not your marriage or kids, not your convictions or conscience or health or friends—and, for sure, don’t hesitate to promote yourselves . . . be aggressive, mean if necessary, as you press toward the top. After all, “God helps those who help themselves.” You must be smart, slick, and sly if success is the bottom line of your agenda. It’s the same old line we’ve been fed for decades. The problem is none of it squares with Scripture.

Now, a word to you who are elders in the churches. I, too, am an elder and a witness to the sufferings of Christ. And I, too, will share in his glory when he is revealed to the whole world. . . .

In the same way, you who are younger must accept the authority of the elders. And all of you, dress yourselves in humility as you relate to one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

1 PETER 5:1, 5

This is genuine success in God’s eyes. No lording over people the place God has granted you. Following God’s directives will bring the one benefit not found in the world’s empty promises . . . a deep sense of lasting satisfaction and the building up of His people. It’s what we could call the forgotten side of success.

Here’s the formula:

Submission + Humility – Worry = God-Honoring Success with Satisfaction.

Now that’s the ticket.