What We Heard 

Success in the business world is measured by achievements or metrics, predominantly financial in nature. Individual goals are tied to a person’s contributions to overall business goals. Viewing those goals with a spiritual lens begins with the recognition that you don’t accomplish any of your goals on your own. Whatever support system exists at home shares the credit. Whatever team you lead or serve shares the credit for an individual’s success. Moreover, God will receive His due credit when you define success using His terms.

What It Means

It is possible to be successful in the eyes of the world and live life as a sold-out follower of Christ. Yes, you can do and be both, as long as your values, priorities, and measures of success in both are Christ honoring. There is a bigger calling beyond bank accounts, excess, and retirement. God would define success as complete commitment and total obedience. Once you have that, you are free to love and enjoy His blessings.

What We Do Next

Pray for ways to make your unique set of skills available to the local church, to your local pastor, to the ministries and missions resourced in your community and around the world. Seize the opportunities prompted by the Holy Spirit to live daily in awe of God, defining yourself and your success by His word and His standard. When you see the magnificence of God, you fall in love with Him. Complete commitment and total surrender are natural when you are in love. Develop a life plan…with the end in mind. With newly defined goals and measures based on God’s word, visualize who you are called to be in Christ and develop a plan to walk that way.

Final Takeaways

• Success needs to extend beyond this life.
• Success is only success if you focus on what matters to God.

MLN Book Recommendation

Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell [link to buy: http://amzn.to/2cAsDi4]

Best selling author of The Tipping Point, Malcom Gladwell, released Outliers: The Story of Success as a way to define, describe, and unleash the power of human potential. Based on the principles presented by Jesus in the Parable of the Talents, Outliers is a book about how success happens. Spoiler: it doesn’t come from the places the world proposes. Like Harold shared at MLN, success means something else because it is something else and it’s found in other ways than we’re often conditioned to think.