Think of something you chased hard and finally got. How long did the satisfaction actually last? What does that honestly tell you about where you've been looking?

Two years ago, A.J. Brown finally won the Super Bowl. He had spent years in the league chasing it — the training, the losses, the offseasons — all of it pointed at the one thing everybody told him was the greatest thing a player could do. And then he won it. Afterward he wrote something honest on Instagram: "I've had time to reflect on being a champion. I tried to feel how everyone made it seem that a champion should feel, but unfortunately, it was short-lived. Two days, to be exact." Two days. A lifetime of striving, and the satisfaction lasted a long weekend. Then the only question left was: when do I get to do it again? This is not a problem with football. It is the oldest problem in the world, and the wisest, richest man who ever lived already ran the whole experiment for us. Solomon

If you're honest, what have you been quietly trading your soul's peace for lately — approval, security, status, comfort? What would it look like to stop the trade?

Jesus asks a question that cuts straight through every success seminar ever given: "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? What could a man give in exchange for his soul?" Notice what He assumes. He assumes you could actually win — that the whole-world scenario is on the table. He doesn't argue that the world is worthless or that ambition is sin. He simply does the math nobody else will do out loud: even if you gain everything, if it costs you your soul, you have made the worst trade in human history. You walked away from the table having lost. We miss this because we forget what we are. We are not bodies that happen to have a spiritual side. We are souls who happen to live, for now, in bodies. There is a desire inside you for God that was programmed in a

What are the gifts, experiences, and even past failures God may have been assembling into your purpose? Name one "good work" you suspect you were specifically built to walk in.

Grace is not the end of the sentence. Paul keeps writing: "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." That word — workmanship — means masterpiece. Something made on purpose, by hand, with intention. When you build something yourself, you love it, you know every part of it, and you made it for a reason. That is how God regards you. You are not mass-produced. You are not an accident the universe coughed up. You are a deliberate work, and a work always implies a purpose. Think about shopping for a car. What makes a car "good"? At a minimum it has to get you from A to B. But there are a million cars, so the real question isn't "is it good?" — it's "good for what?" That gorgeous Corvette is a great car right

Actually do it this weekend: finish the sentence, "Success, for me, is ___." Anchor it in Christ and in what He's redeemed you to do. Write it down, and tell one person in your group.

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 t

Borrowed scoreboards. Pastor Jeff opened with definitions of success from Dale Carnegie, Tony Robbins, Maya Angelou, and others. Whose definition of success have you been unconsciously living by — a parent's, a culture's, the algorithm's? Where did it come from?

What if you've been chasing the wrong scoreboard? Guest Pastor Jeff Sullivan (Granada Church) on defining success God's way — from Ephesians 2:8-10.

The two-day trophy. A.J. Brown won the Super Bowl and the satisfaction lasted exactly two days. Solomon had everything and called it 'a striving after wind.' Have you experienced that emptiness on the other side of a goal you finally reached? What was that like?

What if you've been chasing the wrong scoreboard? Guest Pastor Jeff Sullivan (Granada Church) on defining success God's way — from Ephesians 2:8-10.

The math of Mark 8:36. Jesus asks what it profits to gain the world but forfeit your soul. Why do you think we're so willing to make trades we'd never make if we did the math out loud? What are you tempted to trade your soul's peace for right now?

What if you've been chasing the wrong scoreboard? Guest Pastor Jeff Sullivan (Granada Church) on defining success God's way — from Ephesians 2:8-10.

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What About? (Week 9)

What About Success?

Ephesians 2:8-10

Jeff Sullivan Sunday, June 7, 2026

Watch & Listen

Scripture

EPHESIANS 2:8-10 (ESV)

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

ECCLESIASTES 2:10-11 (ESV)

And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.

MARK 8:36-37 (ESV)

For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul?

ECCLESIASTES 12:13 (ESV)

The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.

PHILIPPIANS 3:13-14 (ESV)

Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But 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.