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Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Are You Successful?



Successful: “Having the correct or desired result.”[1]

Last night, I had the opportunity to play in a thrilling hockey game. My team, a mishmash of random people from the Findlay area, joined together to take on a team of players which is primarily composed of members of the Findlay High School hockey team. Needless to say, the skill level difference between the two teams was astonishing. I couldn’t help but be in awe watching the Findlay High School team so eloquently pass the puck up the ice in professional fashion, deek around our defenders, and place the puck precisely where they wanted in the back of the net.

The objective in hockey is to put the puck in the net more times than the other team. Since success is defined as “having the correct or desired result,” to be successful last night, my team needed to score more goals than the Findlay High School hockey team. We were outshot by a 2-1 ratio, out-skilled, and out-worked, but somehow, in the only place where success in hockey is measured, we won by a score of 8-7. If I didn’t believe in miracles before that game, I certainly would believe in them now!

What Is Your Objective?


When you play a sport, you have a clear objective at which you are aiming. When you play hockey, the objective is to score more goals than the other team. When you play football, the objective is to score more points than the other team. When you play golf, the objective is to put the ball in the hole in as few shots as possible. These objectives are fairly straightforward and aren’t questionable. It’s not like someone is going to randomly decide to change the rules of golf so that the person who puts the ball in the hole in the most shots would be the winner. However, I wouldn’t be opposed to this rule change because I’d win almost every time.

But when it comes to measuring life success, the objective is not quite as straightforward. Some people have the objective to gain wealth, respect, fame, and power. Some people have the objective to gain a vast array of experiences. Some people have the objective to build lasting, meaningful relationships. Some people have the objective to earn their way into an afterlife of reward. These are just a few examples of the wide variety of objectives people have.

Now, I want to ask you to dream with me. What is your life objective? You may have lots of different objectives, but if they all came into conflict with one another and you had to choose only one, which one would it be? Do you have a clear picture in your head of this objective? Once you have a clear picture of your objective, move on to the next section.

Are You on Track to Accomplish Your Objective?


It’s one thing to create a clear picture of our life objective, but it’s another to actually achieve it. The easy part is the dreaming; the hard part is the achieving. How well are you doing at achieving your objective?

This is actually a much tougher question than it may seem on the surface. If you’re objective is to have a million dollars in your 401k plan, then it’s pretty easy to track how well you’re doing at achieving your objective–just plug the numbers into a spreadsheet with a certain rate of return and you can quickly generate a chart to see how well you’re doing. But not all objectives are this easy to track. If your objective is to build long-lasting relationships, for example, then how do you track your progress on this objective? It’s quite a bit more difficult than plugging numbers into a spreadsheet and generating a graph. Can you imagine trying to graph this objective? It’s virtually impossible!

Nonetheless, the people who achieve their objectives do well at continually tracking their progress. They know what they want to achieve, they have a plan to get there, and they continually evaluate their progress, or lack thereof. These are key ingredients which lead them to be able to call themselves “successful.”

How are you tracking your progress? When you evaluate where you want to be versus where you are, do you think you’re on track to achieve your objective?

What Is Success For Me?


I’ll wrap up by sharing a few of my experiences with success. When I was growing up, I decided that my primary objective was to be a millionaire. When my seventh grade math teacher gave me a plan for how to achieve this objective, I went to work on achieving it. The plan started with investing $1,000 in a mutual fund that year, so I scrounged up $1,000, which was a lot of money for a seventh grader, and invested it in a mutual fund. Throughout high school and college, I continued to stick to my plan. After graduating from college, I began working as an engineer and married an engineer, both of which allowed me to continue stashing money away in investments. I regularly ran numbers in spreadsheets to track the progress of our investments, which time after time indicated that we were well on our way towards not only achieving our objective, but blowing it out of the water.

But then things changed. Looking back on it, I guess the word “changed” is really putting it lightly. I didn’t go through a dramatic job loss, death in the family, or some other tragedy; I had a personal encounter with the God of the universe. He turned my world completely upside down and inside out. I had a radical heart transformation which changed everything, and I mean everything, about my life. I was hanging out in my living room one evening and clearly heard God, not audibly but in a still small voice in my heart, calling me to lay down my kingdom. For twenty-seven years, I had been building a kingdom by myself in my own strength, which, according to the Creator of the universe, was good-for-nothing. He was calling me to lay it down so that he could replace it with his kingdom. Having read the Bible countless times, I knew exactly what was going to happen–God was going to completely destroy my kingdom and start over from scratch, including ripping out the foundations. I knew it was going to hurt more than anything I’d experienced in my life. Everything inside of me wanted to continue holding onto my kingdom. But God gave me the strength that evening to acknowledge the inevitable–He also had an objective for my life, and his objective was not for me to become a millionaire, but to become his child. Whether I decided to acknowledge it or not, he was going to get his way because he always gets his way. So I decided it was better for me to go along with his plan than to continue to fight with him about it. Following this encounter, my life has been continuing to be radically transformed as God continues building a new kingdom within me, his kingdom, which is of infinite value compared to my kingdom which had no value whatsoever.[2]

This transformation has brought with it a new objective for my life. Instead of working towards gaining a million dollars, my objective now is to gain Jesus. If I gain Jesus, then I will count my life as a success. How can I track my progress? Well, that’s a complicated question. Since God is the one in control of achieving this objective, he’s the one who’s responsible for tracking the progress and evaluating it rather than me. This actually brings me a lot of peace because I trust him to accomplish his objectives much more than I trust myself, considering he has the power to thwart the plans of men, but no one has the power to thwart his plans.[3] But that doesn’t stop me from trying to catch a glimpse of his progress. The way I track God’s progress on achieving his objective is evaluating the “fruit” coming out of me.[4] Fruit is not outward behaviors, but rather, it is the condition of my heart. Is the fruit coming out of my heart idolatry, enmity, lust, jealousy, greed, and divisions, or is the fruit coming out of my heart love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and self-control?[5] If the second type of fruit continue to be more and more present in my life, then I know God is accomplishing his objective, which means I’m accomplishing my objective!


Picture yourself, maybe many years from now, when you’re retired and reflecting back on your life. Did you achieve your objective? Were you successful?


[1] Merriam-Webster, “Success,” n.d., Accessed may 17, 2017, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/success.
[2] See Matthew 13:44-46 and Philippians 3:2-11.
[3] See Psalm 33:10-11 and Job 42:2.
[4] See Matthew 7:15-20, 12:33-37, and John 15:8.
[5] See Galatians 5:16-24.

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