One of the first changes I had to make early on in starting this site was to change my definition of success. A few months in I went to a writers 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 would get asked was, “How many clicks do you get a day?” On a good day I would get about ten. I became obsessed with those numbers and would allow them to ruin my day. I nit on,y began to measure my success by the numbers, I even began to measure my worth. It was t u til my wife gently reminded me thatIt wasn’t about the numbers. If God reached one person that day, it was successful.
In 1 Samuel 14, Saul had been appointed king of Israel recently. He began fighting the Philistines, but his army didn’t have swords. The Bible kept mentioning how many fighting men he had. 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 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 areas of your life are you feeling like a failure in right now? Are you measuring that by your definition of success or God’s? Chances are you’re looking at some form of numbers (bank account, sales, friends, etc.) to determine that. I heard someone recently 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 be content with what He number He deems 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.
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Devotions by Chris Hendrix 