Maintaining the Stage of Success

Success is popular in our world because everyone wants to have it in everything. If I undertake some enterprise, I expect it eventually to become successful and bring me spiritual or material benefit. If this does not happen, I close that enterprise and think about starting another one.

Let us take a blogger as an example. Today, being a blogger is fashionable, popular, and accessible. Enormous potential has been placed within each one of us, and with a positive evaluation from other people, it can manifest itself in very interesting ways. If I study market demand and offer people exactly what they want, my popularity increases. By studying how marketing and advertising work, I will be able to achieve a certain degree of success very quickly if I use these means to promote my ideas and products. How useful my product will be to the final consumer is no longer such an important question.

If you and I try to evaluate the products of some popular blogger in the light of Eternity, they will most likely fail to meet biblical criteria or give people hope of eternal life. The number of followers does not determine the value of his publications. And if this blogger is a Christian, then in addition to popularity, an enormous responsibility rests upon him to ensure that his materials are not only popular and pure, but also fully consistent with Heavenly standards and biblical truth. All of this must be taken into account before setting out upon such a path to success.

The stage of success in spiritual growth is unique in that every enterprise at this stage proves successful, and every work done with all one’s heart brings a special blessing, especially when a good result is visible. This stage is the longest period of spiritual growth. During it, a believer acquires skills, forms his character, learns to distinguish and separate good from evil, brings new people into the church, and does a great deal of useful work for God’s cause.

The stage of success is God’s stage, which He appointed for our spiritual growth and at which His Spirit actively works for the good of us all. Because success is attractive, particular formulas for success are developed in our society, books are written on the subject, and many people conduct training programs on how to conquer the surrounding world successfully. Although the world resists, it still cannot withstand the successful activity of God’s messengers and is compelled in some areas to surrender its positions and release the tormented into freedom.

A great many books and scientific studies of every kind have been written on this subject. We have become professionals in conducting successful evangelistic programs. And the truth moves forward, confidently making a way for itself.

The Internet has opened new opportunities for preaching the Gospel. Although we were late, we were nevertheless able to occupy this niche and plant the banner of truth there.

But however successful we may be, eventually we all arrive at a lukewarm condition in which some of our works remain hot, while in other respects we cool so greatly that no hot works can melt the icy parts of the heart. Jesus identifies this problem as He addresses our generation and calls us to enter into a close trading relationship with Him.

Some of us who decide to leave the stage of success and give the Lord the opportunity to immerse us within ourselves in order to discover what prevents us from getting rid of this condition begin to look at everything taking place through different eyes and receive a completely different evaluation of our success. The Lord permits us, as we respond to His call, to become disappointed in many good and successful things that previously inspired us so greatly and that, as we saw it, added to our spiritual growth.

But because it is not customary among us to speak about spiritual growth and point to its final goal—the stage of love, which we must necessarily reach—the only solution regarded as correct remains missionary work at the stage of success. When I decide to remain at this stage and do everything possible for it to grow and expand, all my energy is directed toward maintaining everyone and everything at the stage of success.

All my labors and all my interests are directed toward winning as many people as possible for Christ and bringing them to my level. As it is written, ‘The disciple is not above his master’ (Matthew 10:24–25). And what is characteristic is that all my works are in demand and popular. People gladly read them, distribute them, share them, and also use them to replace the works of those who no longer maintain the stage of success.

In God’s plan, this stage of growth is just as important as all the others. But God has a plan for the full development of my faith, and He invites me to set out upon this narrow path, where I will be accompanied by personal spiritual success attained after overcoming difficult spiritual crises.

When I am one stage ahead of my fellow believers, they still understand me and listen with interest. I become for them a spiritual psychologist who understands spiritual matters somewhat more deeply than others. But when I move forward and begin telling others what new things are taking place in my spiritual growth, I notice that I become completely incomprehensible to them.

And when I begin to speak about the love I receive from Christ, which produces a transformation of the entire inner person within me, I understand that I become even less comprehensible. Moreover, my testimony about the spiritual blessings of the stage of love begins to irritate my listeners because it seems to them that I am humiliating them by telling them what I have attained in Jesus. This is not something to fear, but it is something for which we must be prepared.

Unfortunately, the entire Laodicean system is structured to maintain the stage of success and bring everyone precisely to this level, and then to teach them to find other people in the world and bring them to this same stage of development.

But God has His own plan for my victory. He desires to teach me love and lead me through every trial and crisis, showing how His love in me and through me must overcome this world. His task is not only to bring me to the stage of love, but also to help me remain at this level as long as I live and walk with Him.

But ignorance of God’s plans and expectations exerts its influence upon me. I believe that my present position at the stage of success satisfies my Lord. After all, I am successful in advancing God’s cause, which means that God must rejoice in it.

But Jesus invites me to rise higher because my continual success may make my head spin and make me proud, blind, and unfit for His Kingdom. I will begin to rely upon my own knowledge and strength and cease to trust in God.

My salvation consists not only in learning biblical truths, but also in preparing my heart for life among holy beings, where it is customary to pay one another with love and to live in love.

God’s goal is not to lead me to success, but to lead me through success to love. If I stop at success, I risk becoming self-satisfied. But if I allow the Lord to lead me farther, success will cease to be my support, and love will become my nature.

1. Please read Philippians 3:13–14; Hebrews 5:14; 6:1; Romans 12:2, 9; Proverbs 16:18; Psalm 127:1; Zechariah 4:6; Hosea 4:6; Jeremiah 9:23–24; Luke 9:23; 17:10; 1 Corinthians 15:58.

2. What other Bible verses came to your mind?

3. What did you understand?

4. What is the chief goal of my spiritual life: success in ministry or growth in love?

5. Am I able to give up a successful work if the Lord calls me to move forward?

6. And how does the Lord call us to move forward?

7. Can you regard your success as proof of your spiritual maturity?

8. What will I lose if my entire audience disappears but Christ remains?

9. How often do I trust my own knowledge more than the Lord?

10. Why does the Lord sometimes permit disappointment even in good works?

11. What happens to my faith when my labors cease to be successful?

12. Why can the disciple not be above his master?

13. Why does speaking about God’s love sometimes provoke resistance even among believers?

14. If Jesus were to evaluate today not my works, but the measure of His love within me, what evaluation would He give my life?