Lesson 5 of 11 · Chapter: Success

Success That Blesses God

Read time: about 7 minutes · Skill: measuring success as faithfulness, not accumulation

Lesson 4 asked what your earning is for. This lesson asks how you keep score. The world hands you a yardstick the moment you start your career. Chapter 5 takes it out of your hand and replaces it with one that will hold up on your last day.

The story that frames the chapter

Joseph Dear ran the investments of the largest pension fund in the wealthiest nation on earth. An interviewer expected dry, sculpted answers from such an official. Instead he found a man as funny as he was wise, as humble as he was brilliant. "He was our favorite interview," the writer said. Then came the final line that made Chapell stop and think: "Joseph Dear was diagnosed with cancer soon after our interview. He passed away yesterday."

How do you measure success when the interview ends like that? Malcolm Forbes supposedly said, "Whoever dies with the most toys wins." The quiet reply of Scripture: whoever dies with the most toys dies. None of the toys go along. As one person quipped, "There are no Brinks trucks in a funeral procession."

You cannot measure without a goal

You cannot measure success unless you first name the goal. In corporate business the goal is maximizing shareholder value; in academics, raising student achievement; in art, long-term recognition. Each field sets its own yardstick. But Chapell turns the question: if your goal is to bear Christ's name into your workplace and your world, then the measure of your success is how well you have magnified the name of Jesus.

Moses gives that measure its shape. In Deuteronomy 8 he tells Israel about the good land God is bringing them into, a land of wheat and barley, vines and figs and pomegranates, a land where they will eat and be full. Then comes the heartbeat of the chapter:

Notice the direction. We tend to think of blessing as something we receive. Moses says success is blessing God back, giving him honor and glory by making good use of the resources he put in your hands. When gifted musicians make music, that honors God. When farmers diligence their harvest, when businesspeople maximize value by biblical priorities, when engineers open the skies, when teachers brighten futures, when parents nurture a child's gifts, that honors God.

Not just using, but multiplying

But God does not want his gifts merely used. He wants them multiplied. Jesus makes the point in the parable of the talents (Matt. 25:14-30). A master gives five talents to one servant, two to another, one to another, and leaves. He returns to find the first has made five more, the second two more. To both he says the same six words:

The only servant the master rebukes is the one who buried the talent in the ground to keep it safe. The total amount never determined the praise. The five-talent servant and the two-talent servant heard identical commendations. God does not value you for your accumulation; he gives you the responsibility of multiplying whatever he provided. His favor is not measured by how much you were handed. His praise is measured by what you did with it.

God's resources, God's opportunities, God's design

Out of that parable Chapell draws his working definition of success. It is worth memorizing word for word:

Success is using God's resources in God's opportunities for God's design.

Notice the three "God's." Nothing in that sentence is yours. The resources are his. The opportunities are his appointments. The design is his purpose. Your part is faithful stewardship. That is why success is possible for the executive and the bus driver alike.

A bus driver in Alabama ran the same route for seventeen years. Over that time she touched more than three hundred students, because she understood her job as her chance to show the hand and heart of Christ, day after day. One was a special-needs girl who arrived agitated on the days her father's car sat in the driveway. The driver suspected trouble, reported it, and changed that child's future. She was not wealthy. She was not famous. But she took God's resources, in God's opportunity, for God's design. That was success.

Or take Dr. Don McRaven, a cardiologist whose skill saved many lives. Age has now put him in the hospital bed more often than at the bedside. When the pastoral minister comes to sing, the doctor joins in, and their hymns echo down the hallway so other patients can hear of God's love. He can no longer practice medicine. But he can still sing. So he uses the voice God provides to care for patients. It does not matter how young or old you are. What matters is that you are faithfully doing what God is calling you to do.

The slavery you did not see coming

Here is the trap. If faithfulness to God is not your measure, then the world's expectations become your standard by default. The culture says success is the big home, the luxury car, the nice clothes, the corner office, enough money for a recreational rocket ride. So you start dancing to whatever tune the segment of culture you are trying to impress decides to play. Meet the expectations and you feel good, briefly. Miss them and you feel like a failure, scrambling for the next deal to prove you still matter.

That is a slavery most never name. Cam Newton went into the 2016 Super Bowl with his mother's text ringing in his ear: "Remember your God." He lost. Hoodie up, head down, single-word answers, and he walked out of the press conference. Challenged to be a better loser, he answered, "Show me a good loser and I'll show you a loser." A man of tremendous talent and accomplishments had assessed himself a loser, all because he did not meet expectations, his own or anyone else's.

Chapell wonders aloud what would have been different had Cam remembered his mother's words: "The game did not go the way I wanted. But my identity is in Christ. I am united to the King of the universe who gave his Son to die for me. I am eternally treasured. All of this will pass, but I will be with my Savior forever, and he loves me no less because I fumbled a football."

This is also why Moses warns that throwing off God's standards does not make you free; it re-chains you. Bernie Madoff abandoned ethics to get rich and wound up in a cell built of steel, concrete, guilt, and shame. Johnny Manziel partied his talent into wreckage. The "freedom of being me," Chapell says, is too often just sanctified selfishness. True freedom is obedience, walking the secure path of the God who brought you out of slavery and has your good at heart (Deut. 8:11-16).

When you have not succeeded at faithfulness

Here is the question that should be nagging you by now. If faithfulness is the measure, what about the days you have not been faithful? Moses anticipates the pride that follows a good quarter:

We stand before God because of what he has done for us, not because of what we have done for him. His covenant love is based on his promises, not our performance, and it culminates in Jesus Christ. So God never says, "If you do good, then I will love you." He says, "I will love you, pardon you, and provide for you. Now live for me with the resources I supply." Even your power to succeed is a gift. Even your faithfulness is fueled by his.

That is what lets us get back up when we fail. We do not come to God pleading our record. We come the way an old hymn puts it:

Thy work alone, O Christ, can ease this weight of sin; thy blood alone, O Lamb of God, can give me peace within.

That is the foundation. Not a bigger title. Not a cleaner record. A faithful Savior, whose grace restarts your faithfulness every morning.

Make it real this week

Success reframes best when you name your own resources, opportunities, and design. These answers save in this browser, so you can come back next quarter and re-measure.

Go deeper

Where this is going

Success asks how you keep score. Next we ask how you lead. Chapter 6 turns to Humility, and Chapell opens it with a surprise from the business world: Jim Collins found that the companies that went from good to great were led by what he called "Level 5 leaders," people marked by a paradoxical blend of personal humility and fierce resolve. Then Chapell turns to a king who rides a donkey. True humility, it turns out, is chosen, costly, and courageous. Never timidity.