A Better Aim

What comes to mind when you think of the word success? Do you think of the tangible “fruit” you’ve seen in your ministry overseas, the languages you’ve learned, or the business you’ve started? Or does it feel hard to define anything as success when you set your current ministry alongside the carefully outlined vision you had in place when you first began? 

My story of life overseas thus far has caused me to lean more into the latter view of success. We have lived in Southeast Asia for eight years now and I struggle to find much of anything that has been a “success” when measured up against our initial plans and expectations. Things like unexpected pregnancy complications, freak accidents, and sudden deaths of family members over these past eight years have often made us feel like failures because we haven’t accomplished many of our original goals. Success is a concept we have wrestled with often and its definition in our hearts and lives has been refined almost as much as we have been in the process.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines success as “the accomplishment of an aim or purpose”. But would this match up with God’s definition?

Let’s take a look at one of God’s most faithful servants, Joseph, and see how the words success, succeed, or successful characterized his story.

“The LORD was with Joseph, and he became a successful man, and he was in the house of his Egyptian master. His master saw that the LORD was with him and that the LORD caused all that he did to succeed in his hands” (Genesis 39:2–3 ESV, emphasis mine).

Let’s review just for a moment how Joseph got to Egypt. His brothers beat him, stripped him, and left him for dead, before deciding to show mercy and instead sell him into slavery. Not what anyone would call “the road to success.” But here he is, a slave, and God is helping him to succeed. Even in the eyes of his masters, God allows him to find favor. And where does that success lead to?

Prison. 

That’s right, in the following verses, Joseph is unjustly accused of assaulting his master’s wife and thrown into prison. Again, not what any of us would call a shining success story.

But then, a few verses later, we see “success” creeping into the storyline yet again:

“The keeper of the prison paid no attention to anything that was in Joseph’s charge, because the LORD was with him. And whatever he did, the LORD made it succeed” (Genesis 39:23).

Joseph’s story—and God working in his story—seems to radically redefine our human definition of “success.” Eventually, God did allow Joseph’s presence in Egypt to be the primary means through which he would preserve his people through a famine. (See Genesis 45:5–7.) But, even as a slave, sold by his own brothers, or in prison dungeons, wrongfully accused—Joseph remained faithful. Whether in the unseen moments when he didn’t give in to his master’s wife’s sexual advances, or in the significant moments where he was entrusted with great responsibility over the entire prison, he didn’t let “success” be defined at a human level but entrusted himself to God. 

We can be faithful and eager in the task we set out to do and still be thrown into a pit of loneliness, isolation, or debilitating sickness. We can be full of integrity and still be wrongfully accused by those we have come to serve.  We can faithfully declare the message we’ve come all this way and learned a whole new language (or two or three!) to share and still be rejected. We can have well-laid plans that crumble because we lose our visa platform. 

How drastically would our lives and ministry and calling change if we viewed our primary aim as Paul summed up in 2 Corinthians?

“So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil” (2 Corinthians 5:9–10).

Instead of asking if we are succeeding at a task, what if we asked first, “Is he pleased in the posture of my heart, to do all of it as an offering of worship unto him?”

Amy Carmichael, in her incredible little book about the realities of life in India called Things as They Are says this:

“There have been times of late when I have had to hold on to one text with all my might: ‘It is required in stewards that a man may be found faithful.’ (1 Corinthians 4:2) Praise God, it does not say ‘successful’.”

Faithfulness is what he requires of us as we steward our lives, our families, and our ministries unto God. Success is up to him—he defines it. And the storyline of Scripture and most of redemptive history is that he uses the most backward, upside-down ways that more often look like defeat and failure to accomplish his greatest work. The cross of Jesus Christ declares that reality loudest of all. So, let’s make bold and faith-filled plans, unto him. But, let’s also lay them at his feet and trust that the path he may take us on to accomplish those plans may look nothing like success. Every page of the story he has written thus far tells us this: we can trust that the Author is still up to something good, in ways we can scarcely imagine. May our aim be to please HIM, no matter what, believing that—even if we don’t succeed at any of our goals—we know how his story ends, and he never, ever fails at anything he sets out to accomplish.

Has your definition of success shifted in your time overseas?  Who do you typically let define success for you?