Selah2020: Pause and Reflect

[Transcript of a midweek message published by Horley Baptist Church on YouTube^[1], May 2021]

The world tells me that I need to be successful. I want to be successful. But what does that mean for a follower of Jesus. What are the dangers, and how can I be successful?

We live in a world that’s obsessed with success and fame and getting the most out of life. My question is, as a follower of Jesus what does it mean to be successful? Should I be successful? Are there dangers of trying to be successful? How can I be successful?

The other week I did a personality test. you’ve probably heard of the Myers Briggs test or stuff like that and this was called an Enneagram test, it’s quite big in America at the moment. The personality type that came up warned me that one of my biggest drives in life is to be successful. In fact one of my biggest fears in life is to not be successful.

I was thinking about it, It really concerned me and worried me a lot and it made me think. You know, if I’ve got that drive, if I’m living with that fear in my life, what are the possible repercussions? What’s the possible fruits of that drive for success. I guess there’s mental burnout, there’s moral failure, broken relationships, broken marriage and a poor inner life, a poor relationship with Jesus Christ.

To be perfectly honest, I’m my worst enemy. Often ministers are their own worst enemies and yet the church doesn’t particularly help the way we view church, the way we view success because the reality is, we want our churches to be successful, don’t we? We want to reach out to as many people as possible. After all, wasn’t that what Jesus commanded us, commissioned us to do?

So as churches we end up doing more stuff, we end up asking for more volunteers to work harder. Discipleship is around equipping people to work for the church and to work for Jesus. Then we try and measure success, and probably the easiest way to measure its success is to measure bums on seats. I am emotionally invested as a church leader in the number of people that come to church and at this current time of covid I’m emotionally invested in those viewing figures on YouTube. It affects me when I see those numbers drop, which they have been doing, so because how else am I supposed to measure my success?

See, when I look in the New Testament at Jesus’s life as told in the four gospels, we see that Jesus suffered from the same pressures in life. He had a busy successful ministry, he was followed by a crowd of people that were always demanding of him, he was hounded by Pharisees and teachers of the law that questioned his every move and motive, he had disciples – his closest friends – that tried to impose their idea of greatness and success upon him, and yet Jesus rejected all of those. In fact in earthly terms, he failed in the worst possible way – he was executed – and yet we know that actually Jesus was more successful than any other person because he lived up to the calling on his life. He followed his purposes exactly.

We can fall into the danger as people, as church leaders, as churches, to define success in earthly terms. Success is about doing more, being more, having more influence, more power being great. That’s not how Jesus viewed success. So how do I know that I am successful? how do I know that I am following the purposes, the calling that God has on my life? Well, just three things I want to leave with you.

Number one is, do not compare yourself to others. I do all the time. I compare myself to other church leaders, I compare Horley Baptist Church to other churches, and most of the time I find myself wanting so I push myself that little bit harder. Actually, we are incomparable because the calling and the purposes for our lives are completely based on us as an individual. God has designed us for an individual purpose that only you, only me, only a church can fulfil. Therefore, we’re not to compare ourselves with others or try and match their calling. We’re there to find out what God’s calling is on our lives.

Second thing is, are you learning to rest in Jesus? Are you spending time in prayer and quiet time in order to empower your success or to avoid failure, or are you spending time in prayer in order to build and deepen your relationship with Jesus Christ? As a church when we come to disciple people, are we discipling people to be more successful or are we discipling people to lean on Jesus and rest in his presence? I think we’d avoid a lot of those burnout issues, a lot of those moral failures if actually we spent time teaching people to spend time with Jesus.

Number three; learn to listen to your body and your friends. Ask questions, think about how your body is responding to the stresses and strains of life, and ask yourself and ask your friends “am I doing activities that actually my inner life and my health cannot cope with?” There is no point driving yourself into an early grave, either physically, spiritually or morally. Neil Young said in one of his song lyrics “I’d rather burn out than fade away” but do keep in mind that Kurt Cobain quoted those very lyrics in his suicide note. It’s a sobering thought. I think we are called to be successful as Christians. The problem is, the difficulty is that we can’t look to the world in order to define what those successes mean. Learn what your calling is, live your life for God’s purposes, learn to spend time with Jesus to deepen your relationship with him. Listen to your body and don’t push yourself beyond what it can bear.

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[1] YouTube link: How can I be successful?
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