Write the Definition

Here is something strange about most of our lives: we will spend hours arguing about success, comparing ourselves to others over it, losing sleep about it — and never once sit down and define it. We don't have it written anywhere. No personal mission, no clear goal, no sentence we could read back. And when you have never defined success for yourself, you don't escape the question; you just let the algorithm and the neighbors answer it for you. Keeping up with the Joneses. The elite school. The next promotion. You end up chasing things you never actually chose. Paul refused to live that way. Writing from prison near the end of his life, he says, "Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own." Catch the order. First: Christ made me His own. The identity comes before the effort. Then, out of that settled belonging, comes the drive: "One thing I do — forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." This is the man who called himself the chief of sinners and then said, "but in Christ I have all things." That combination is the engine of a redeemed life. He knew exactly who he was in Christ, and he knew God had redeemed him *for* something — so he ran. His last words were not a list of trophies. They were: "I have fought a good fight, I have kept the faith, there is laid up for me a crown." So here is your assignment this weekend. Write your own definition of success. Not Dale Carnegie's, not Tony Robbins', not your father's, not even your pastor's. Yours. But build it on the two anchors this week handed you. One: you cannot be successful outside of Christ — your soul was made for God and nothing else will satisfy it. Two: He has redeemed you for something specific, and your job is to seek Him until you know what it is. Get a piece of paper. Write the sentence. "Success, for me, is ___." Then spend the rest of your life pressing on toward it — not striving after wind, but straining toward the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.