Tag: success

Categories
Christian Living

There Is No Middle Ground

a throne room with one throne signifying that there is no middle groundWe all have a Central Command Post inside of us. You have a “Mission Control” Center that runs your life. I often call it the Throne Room of life. There is only one throne in that room, and laying beside the throne is only one crown, only one kingly robe, and only one royal scepter. And only one person can sit one that throne with these royal items – and you get to choose who it will be.

For most of us, the person seated on our throne is “self.” But God tells us that He is the only One who can sit on that throne and not destroy a life. But I feel like I could do a pretty good job of running my life, so maybe I should retain ownership. So who will I invite to sit on the throne of my life?

Verse 39. He who has found his life will lose it . . .
Jesus makes it very clear that there is no middle ground. He will not share the throne with me. Either he sits on it completely or he stands aside. He doesn’t say, “Brian I’ll sit over here on this half of the throne, and you come squeeze in beside me.” Two people on the throne is one person too many.

So Jesus gives us only two alternatives: spare your life or sacrifice your life. He leaves no room for middle ground. If I decide to protect my own interests, I will lose. But If I die to myself and live for His interests, I will find true success in life. Jesus knows that the real war that I am fighting is spiritual and that it takes place inside of me – and it comes down to who will I choose to sit on the throne and run my life . . . it comes down to selfishness versus sacrifice. (Warren Wiersbe)

As a Christ-follower, I am to give up all of my individual “rights” to the King, together with any possessions, passions, pastimes, or people that might distract me from following Him. In “losing” these lesser aspects of earthly life, I “find” true worth — I find God’s purpose, joy, and reward. (Holman New Testament Commentary)

And that is the best thing anyone could ever find.
Today, I’m getting off of my throne and asking Him to take His proper place.
Who will you invite to sit on the throne of your life today?

Categories
Parenting

Teaching Children To Fail

Are you teaching your children to fail?
A paper with a grade of F = fail
K-Love has “Life Change Moments” and one from earlier this year was a good reminder of a powerful lesson that we all need to teach to our children – Teaching our children to fail well.

The statement made was that we go get our child ice cream they win the basketball game with the final shot, celebrating their victory. However, if they miss that last shot, we hang our heads and try not to talk about it, indicating to them our shame and disappointment. What we need to do instead is to teach that failure is part of life. We need to be honest and transparent with our own failures, telling our children at dinnertime about the bone-headed mistake that we made at work today.

I agree with this “Life Change Moment.” I’m not saying that we need to congratulate our children’s failures, but that we should be realistic and let them know that failure is normal and not shameful. I’ve seen too many children & teens brokenhearted due to seeing their parent’s intense disappointment due to the child’s failure (or lack of success) at a sporting event or some other competition. It is so easy to show our disappointment with our children’s failures and poor choices without ever letting them know that we adults also make poor choices and have failures. So let’s be honest and transparent and teach our children to fail well – learning not to be shamed, but rather to use failure as an instructor and motivator to help us learn how to succeed in the future.

God, Help Us To Change Our Conversations – even with our children!

Parents, any practical suggestions on how to do this?

“Spare the rod and spoil the child – that is true. But, beside the rod, keep an apple to give him when he has done well.” –Martin Luther

— brian rushing

Categories
Christian Living

Spin the Wheel on the Game of Life… find Success!

The spinner from the boardgame Life symbolizing the chance of success The spinner on the Game of Life… I used to love spinning that colorful, numbered wheel. Perhaps if I could spin it just right, I could land on the right squares, score an occupation with a high salary, become a millionaire, and “win the Game of Life.” If only winning at real life was as easy.

But it takes a bit more to be a success in this life. Gaining tremendous wealth takes more effort than the chance spinning of a small, plastic wheel. And for many that is the full definition of success – making money. But is that really the definition of success? How should I define success? To have all that my heart desires? To have more than my neighbor? To be envied by others?

The problem is that the wrong definition of success leaves us empty – and too many of us have chosen the wrong definition.

Ravi Zacharias states: “One of the most common refrains we hear from those who have reached the pinnacle of success is that of the emptiness that still stalks their lives, all their successes notwithstanding. …judging by the remarks of some who have attained those higher standards, there is frequently an admission of disappointment. After his second Wimbledon victory Boris Becker surprised the world by admitting his great struggle with suicide. Jack Higgins, the renowned author…has said that the one thing he knows now at this high point of his career…: “When you get to the top, there’s nothing there.””

And another famous American business tycoon who achieved success in all of the ways that the world defines it indicated: “Here I am in the twilight years of my life, still wondering what it’s all about…. I can tell you this, fame and fortune is for the birds.”

“This…is one of the more difficult of life’s realities to accept. Those who have not yet experienced the success they covet find it impossible to believe that those who have attained it find it wanting in terms of giving meaning to life” (Ravi Z.).

Success based on wealth, material possessions, and fame have been found to be so empty that over and over again celebrities at the pinnacle of this type of success look for happiness in drugs and alcohol. The depression of reaching the top and finding nothing there can be so overwhelming that many of these celebrities attempt suicide. “For many in our high-paced world, despair in not a moment; it is a way of life” (Ravi Z.).

Thus, success by this definition is fatally flawed. So I’ve chosen to define my success by knowing and doing the will of God. I have found this to be so much more fulfilling. How about you? How do you define success?

God sends no one away empty except those who are full of themselves. (Dwight L. Moody)

— brian rushing

Categories
Christian Living

Fill ‘Er Up

What have I set my heart on in an attempt to fill it up?gas pump representing the idea of how we want to be filled up with success
Our society and culture tell us that if we set our hearts on success, fame, pleasure, and influence, then we will have enough and will find joy, happiness, & fulfillment. But what if someone who had acquired all these things told you that it was all a lie? That these things still won’t be enough to fill you up?

Famous British author Malcolm Muggeridge stated:
“I may, I suppose, regard myself as a relatively successful man. People occasionally stare at me in the streets. That’s fame; I can fairly easily earn enough money to qualify for admission to the higher slopes of the Internal Revenue Service. That’s success. Furnished with money and a little fame [I] may partake of friendly diversions. That’s pleasure. It might happen once in a while that something I said or wrote was sufficiently heeded for me to persuade myself that it represented a serious impact on our time. That’s fulfillment. Yet, I say to you, and I beg you to believe me, multiply these tiny triumphs by millions, add them all up together, and they are nothing, less than nothing. Indeed, a positive impediment measured against one drop of that living water Christ offers to the spiritually thirsty, irrespective of who or what they are.”

The truth is that all of the enthrallment and novelty that I can find in these things is not enough. Because “somewhere and sometime, human enthrallment finds its limit, as does human capacity. God alone is the perpetual novelty—providing wonder, truth, love, and security” (Ravi Zacharias).

So add up all the success that the world offers and it is of no comparison to knowing Christ. Paul found that same thing to be true and said all that he had gained he now counted as worthless garbage in comparison to knowing Christ.

So what should I do? Perhaps, I should try to follow the example of Ezra – “the good hand of his God was upon him. For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the LORD and to practice it, and to teach His statutes and ordinances in Israel.” If I set my heart on God and practice and teach His Word to others, then I will fulfillment in life.

Because, “when man lives apart from God, chaos is the norm. When man lives with God, as revealed in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the hungers of the mind and heart find their fulfillment” (Ravi Z).

Set your heart on God and you will find in Him the wonder of perpetual novelty.

“Christ is a substitute for everything, but nothing is a substitute for Christ.” (H.A. Ironside)

Categories
Relationships

Upwardly Mobile

As Americans, we are in a society that prides itself on climbing the ladder of success. We find ourselves striving to stay upwardly mobile – gaining more position, more status, more salary, and with all of it… more stress. And though we endure the stress, we tell ourselves that this must be the “good life.” We also might look down on others for not being the go-getters that we are (even though they sure seem less stressed).
ladder with blue sky and clouds behind representing our upwardly mobile desires
Those who aren’t striving to climb the ladder like us sometimes get labeled as lazy – like the mountain people of Appalachia in the book Christy:   “The highlanders were often accused of being lazy and shiftless. As I got to know them better, my conclusion was: relaxed, yes; shiftless, a few of them; greedy, scarcely ever. …”It’s today. I must be livin’.” summed up their philosophy well—a philosophy that aggressive people would spurn.

“Yet which is right? Human life is short. Each of us has limited number of years. So are we going to go through those so few years with little time for our family and friends, and unseeing eyes for the beauties around us concentrating on accumulating money and things when we have to leave them all behind anyway?

“I began to wonder, if the mountain values were not more civilized than civilization’s. At least I found the absence of greed and pushiness as refreshing as a long cool drink of sparkling mountain spring water.”

I have found this true in my own life as I have traveled to other countries in the past few years. At first I found it difficult to sit around and visit for so long when there was so much work to be done. Coming from a “Ready, Fire, Aim” society, it was difficult to sit still. But by the time my first week was complete, I was experiencing that same feeling of being refreshed just by seeing how relaxed they were and willing to enjoy one another. It also made me wonder if our civilized, upwardly mobile way was really as good as we say it is.

We are so busy scaling the ladder that we often do so to the neglect of our family. We work hard to accumulate so much stuff that we can’t take with us. The only real treasures that I will take with me when I die are my relationships. Maybe some of the values that have disappeared from our culture are less civilized that those of our great-grandparents or those of cultures that we do not consider as sophisticated as our own.

I pray that I will learn contentment in Christ and in my relationships, and that I will not allow society to push me toward being upwardly mobile just ‘cause everyone else says that is what the good life is all about.

Have you found an effective way to fight against the culture’s pressure to focus on the ladder? How do you fight to focus more on building relationships?