The Measure of Success

I've heard of and read about many different methods of measuring success.  So many of these methods are centered around lifting up human accomplishments, lifting up personal greatness, lifting up self.  As much as we should celebrate victories and triumphs, because that can and often does spur us on to the next victory, I think there are some serious problems with how we define success. 

Success IS NOT about bank account levels and net worth.

Success IS NOT about status in one's career, marketplace, or job.

Success IS NOT about the number and worth of owned cars, boats, homes, etc.

Success IS NOT about personal fame, glory, awards, and accomplishments.

So, (even if you don't agree go along with me here) success is not any of these things or any of these categories for that matter.  In fact, to take this to the fullest and truest extent possible; success in it's truest form has nothing at all to do with anything related to one's self.  True success is actually found in the way we affect the world around us.  I have come to believe that the best 2 measures of success and the only 2 that really matter are these: Lives Touched & Lives Changed   

Some might want to push back on this and say that success can be determined in many ways.  And I would say, yes, this is true, because the measure of success is totally based on purpose.  If your purpose is to get as rich as possible and you do so than you might consider yourself successful.  I have come to my methods of measuring success based on my purpose as well, but unlike a worldly, self-determined purpose; my purpose in life is not determined by me.  My purpose in life is given by my Father in Heaven and His Son Jesus Christ.  My purpose comes from God's word, God's calling, God's commission; specifically from Matthew 28:18-20, Mark 16:15, Luke 24:46-49, John 13:13-17, and Acts 1:7-8; just to name a few.  My purpose, as the Apostle Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians 5:14-21, is the reconciliation of the world to God.  God through me and many like me is bringing the world back into a right relationship with Him.  This is my purpose.

So my measures of success come from the lives that God has used me to touch and the lives he has used me to change.  In 1 Corinthians 3:6-9 Paul explains that "God uses some to plant the seed and some to water the seed, but only God can grow the seed."  We all have parts to play in each life we come into contact with.  At times we may be the planters, at times we may be the ones who water.  Some lives we will touch, some lives we will change.  It isn't exactly the most satisfying way to measure success because often we never get to know the touch or change we have made, but God does.  Other times the most we may know is a statement of thanks or gratitude of the touch or change we made.  We must become content and fulfilled with these moments of blessing that God gives us.  Rarely ever are we able to be around to see the full extent of the affect we were able to have on a life.  But those moments are the few and far between that God gives us to really see the way God has changed us all and through these times God gives us renewed purpose to continue being used by Him to be agents of Touch and Change in this World.  

"For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.  And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again."  2 Corinthians 5:14-15