Your Discontentment May Arise from How You Define Success
Typically, if your child gets into a fight at school, you don’t count it successful parenting. However, one time I rewarded my son with ice cream after such a physical altercation. He had been coming home day after day complaining about this one big-for-his-age kid who terrorized him and his classmates. I asked him if he reported the matter to his teacher, and he said he did but nothing ever changed. I then instructed him that if he ever found himself in a situation where this boy was hurting a classmate and no teacher was around, he needed to use the appropriate amount of necessary physical force to bring order to the situation. One day, a big-for-his-age kid was brought to tears because of my son’s right fist, and we got ice cream to celebrate.
A lot of people would not count my son’s actions as success. If his school, for example, had ever found out about the altercation, he would have faced disciplinary action for fighting. How you define success depends on what your goals are. The goal of a school is to keep order and peace. Fighting interrupts that goal. Fighting, therefore, constitutes failure, not success. My goal as a father, however, was to help my son grow in character by teaching him when it’s appropriate to use his strength to protect others. By my estimation, my son’s actions constituted success and warranted reward.
Many of our problems in the Christian life derive from our failure to define success the same way God does. We often grow frustrated because we are pursuing goals that God never promised to fulfill, and, consequently, we fail to celebrate the wins that God is achieving in our lives every day. When we live by the wrong criteria of success, we set ourselves up for perpetual discontentment and run the risk of wrongly concluding that God is not for us. When we adopt false standards for success—often from the world—we render ourselves unable to see the work of God’s invisible hand all around us.
I was thinking of this recently as I meditated on 1 Samuel 18. Three times, the text mentions that David “was successful” or “had success” (v. 5, 14, 30). Specifically, the account details success in two areas. Relationally, David was loved by Jonathan, by the people, and by Michal, Saul’s daughter (v. 1, 16, 20). Vocationally, David found success in battle against Israel’s enemy, the Philistines. God also reveals the secret to David’s success: “for the LORD was with him” (v. 14, 28).
If we take God’s word at face value, we conclude after reading these verses that David was indeed successful. However, I’m struck by another element of the story. Throughout the account, David is running for his life from King Saul. Further, God has promised him the kingdom, but he has yet to occupy his rightful throne. Would you feel successful if the most important person in your life hated you? Would you feel successful if the position you were promised was not yet yours?
David is successful only according to God’s criteria. By any other measure, we probably would not consider David successful. To his credit, David exemplifies the life of faith—he’s living for God’s goals and finds satisfaction in success as God defines it. As Saul schemes to have David killed, he continues to serve faithfully and even humbly professes his own unworthiness at the prospect of joining the king’s family through marriage (v. 18, 23). David is perfectly content to allow God to define success for him. He refuses to grasp beyond what God has allowed him.
David is but one example of a pattern we see repeated in Scripture. If you look closely, you will notice that his life story follows the same narrative arc as that of figures like Joseph, Esther, and Daniel. In each case, the character suffers under unjust treatment from enemies of God. Yet, because of God’s sustaining grace resulting in their faithfulness in difficult circumstances, God uses their experience behind enemy lines to bring about salvation for his people.
Perhaps you realize now the significance of this story. It’s also the story of Jesus. No one would have considered Jesus successful—not the Romans, not his own people, and not even his own family. He was born into an unimpressive family and refused to play by the world’s playbook of success. To top it all, his life ended on a Roman cross—the most shameful method of execution in the known world at that time. And yet, according to God, that very crucifixion accomplished the single greatest instance of success the universe has ever seen—the salvation of God’s people.
What is success, as God defines it? If I were to take a stab at defining it, it would go something like this: “Success as a Christian is pursuing faithfulness to God in every circumstance God places us.” Notice that this definition says nothing about results. When we live by faith, we must ultimately leave the results in God’s hands. Parent, you can’t ensure that your child loves Jesus, but you can faithfully teach them the way. Christian, you can’t produce successful outcomes, but you can make sure your goals are the same as God’s. You can “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,” trusting that God will take care of the rest (Matthew 6:33).
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