Commit your actions to the Lord, and your plans will succeed. Proverb 16:3
Better to have little, with godliness, than to be rich and dishonest. Proverbs 16:8
We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps. Proverbs 16:9
Better to have little, with fear for the Lord, than to have great treasure and inner turmoil. Proverbs 15:16
Better to live humbly with the poor than to share plunder with the proud. Proverbs 16:19
True humility and fear of the Lord lead to riches, honor, and long life. Proverbs 22:4
If you are slack, in the day of distress your strength is limited. Deliver those who are being taken away to death, and those who are staggering to slaughter, oh hold them back. If you say, “See, we did not know this,” does He not consider it who weighs the hearts? and does He not know it who keeps your soul? and will He not render to man according to his work? My son, eat honey, for it is good, yes, the honey from the comb is sweet to your taste; know that wisdom is thus for your soul; if you find it, then there will be a future, and your hope will not be cut off. Proverbs 24:10-14 (NASB)
How we engage with what is here in the middle of what we call life on planet earth makes all the difference in regard to whether we are truly “successful” or not. There are “those who don’t get it” and there are “those who do get it.” For “those who don’t get it,” engaging with what is here on planet earth is all about how to get life to serve them and how they can use it. For “those who do get it,” engaging with what is here on planet earth is not about trying to use life but serving it. They are ones who are focused on being a steward of life and not a consumer of life. Herein lies the true “measure” of success.
Above is a whole set of Proverbs. Please read through them again and write down things that stand out to you. What is the one thing that resonates the most with you? Finally, identify one change you need to make in your life in regard to how to measure success?
For those who keep God out of the equation and don’t take into account what happens next after this life, maximum consumption of what this life has to offer becomes the end result they pursue. The path they take, the process they go through, and the means they use are all justifiable for achieving the end result they are after. In the end they will find out that they were wrong about “success” in life. Like those in our Proverb 24 passage, they will say, “we did not know this.” Oh, that somewhere along the way they had come to realize that “God weighs the hearts,” “he keeps your soul,” and “he will render to man according to his work.”
Lord, I thank you that you are accomplishing the great work of delivering me from myself and living merely for myself. Thank you for the perspective of eternity. I ask that you continue to bring to me wisdom for my soul so that as I continue to walk with you it will come about more than ever before that the living I do will truly line up with how you measure “success.”
