How Can I Recognize Success?

The Kingdom of God is entered, not built. His work is complete. Our spiritual walk and work is complete in Him. So where is the activity and change? In the soulical realm, with the physical following after. Our goal is to enter into His rest, not to become more productive, build His Kingdom, or even to make disciples of all nations (remember Jesus didn’t send out everyone, only those who had first come to Him, and had learned dependence on His Father).

So recognizing success will be a private thing, centering around a restful dependence. That’s not to say that a successful Christian walk is passive; far from it. It’s just active in a different way. Jesus’s walk on earth was the perfect example of a dependent life, yet the last thing we would say was that He was passive. But His motivation to act, His ability, His power all came through His depending on His Father.

Where Are the Role Models of Success?

One of the ways we are motivated is by wanting to be like someone we admire. We recognize someone’s positive traits or that they have achieved certain goals that are appealing to us. So we reason that if we can do what they do we can also achieve similar goals or traits. This is a normal expectation; Christians should be able to identify role models that exemplify dependence on the Father. This is one of the reasons Jesus came in the flesh, and dwelt among us. And Paul encouraged his readers to follow him as he followed Christ; to examine his life, to see where he was depending on his God. As we truly learn how to depend on the Father, we want to also be aware that there will likely come a time when we will be used as a role model in some capacity. We just don’t want a public ministry to be our measure of success.