Measuring Success

One of the first changes I had to make early on when I started this site was to change my definition of success. A few months after starting I went to a writer’s conference. The number one question people asked was, “How many subscribers do you have?” I was embarrassed to tell them 35. I had heard them sharing how they had several thousand. The next question that I would get asked was, “How many clicks do you get a day?” On a good day I would get about ten. After that conference I became obsessed with the stat numbers and would allow them to ruin my day. I not only began to measure my success by the numbers, I even began to measure my worth. It wasn’t until my wife gently reminded me that it wasn’t about the numbers. If God reached one person that day, it was successful.

In 1 Samuel 14, Saul had been recently anointed king of Israel. He immediately began fighting the Philistines. The account says that his army didn’t have swords so they created makeshift weapons. It also mentions several times how many fighting men he had. At one point Saul was camped under a pomegranate tree while trying to figure out how to get through a pass that was defended by the Philistines. His son Jonathan asked his own armor bearer to walk with him. In verse 6, Jonathan said to his armor bearer, “Let’s cross over to the camp of those heathen Philistines. Maybe the Lord will help us; if he does, nothing can keep him from giving us the victory, no matter how few of us there are” (GNT). Jonathan understood that success wasn’t in his hands or in numbers. It was given and determined by God. He and the armor bearer fought the Philistine army and won a great battle that day through the Lord’s help.

What’s an area of your life where you either feel like a failure or that you don’t measure up? Are you measuring that area by comparing your success to someone else’s or by God’s definition? Chances are you’re looking at some form of numbers (bank account, sales, friends, likes, followers etc..) to determine that. I once heard someone say, “We measure what’s important to us, but are we measuring what’s important to God?” How we look at things matters and the enemy will twist our definition of success to make us feel down, unworthy, unsuccessful, un-you name it. In God’s economy, things work differently. Instead of asking Him to move whatever number you’re measuring, ask Him to move your perspective to see His idea of success. Ask Him to help you to be content with how He deems it a success. Once you change that, lots of things in your life will change and you’ll be satisfied knowing what matters to Him, matters to you.

Photo by Jukan Tateisi on Unsplash

Throwback Thursday is a feature I’m using to help build some margin into my schedule to pursue other ventures. Each Thursday I’ll be bringing you a previously written devotional that still speaks encouragement to us from God’s Word.