What does success look like?
With the particular clarity that 2:40 AM sometimes provides, I know that in the spiritual realm it doesn’t always (or perhaps I should say it almost never) looks the way the world and our flesh thinks it should.
I say almost never because I believe that for every “we prayed, caught a vision, and grew from four people to four thousand” story, for every “three college students got together to pray and out of this came national revival” story, there are thousands of stories where four people grew to twelve or shrunk to 2.
Success in God’s eyes, I believe, looks like faithfulness, regardless of how that manifests itself; faithfulness in all the things no one sees. Prayer, for instance (an area in which I particularly struggle). Consistency. Love. The faithfulness to finish one’s part in the race and be able to pass the baton to the next person who may be the one who gets to break the tape and hear the cheers of the crowd.
It includes the faithfulness to join, full-throated and open hearted, in the cheering throng, in anonymity. To trust the One who calls and equips to have called and equipped you precisely as he meant to
, to accomplish what he set out to do.
To this point, hopefully according to God’s purpose and not, I pray, due to my own cowardice, sloth, bad priorities or lack of faith, I generally find myself as the one who is getting the water bottles filled and making sure the runners have the right shoes. Most days I’m OK with that. But there are some 2:40 AM moments in life when this pattern I’ve lived, repeatedly and through the decades, causes me to wake up from a troubled sleep.
Lord, please bring clarity. Please loosen my grip on what I consider mine so my hands will be free to wield the towels, equipment bags, water bottles and first aid kits necessary for the other runners to cross the victory line.
What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.
– 1 Corinthians 3:5-9 ESV