A Sermon Delivered on Wednesday evening, October 28
th, 2020, by
Evangelist PAUL ACQUAH, Live on MZ Radio London, UK
If someone were to ask you to define success, what would you say? No doubt there will be about as many different answers as the number of people asked. You see, most people define success in terms of achieving goals or acquiring wealth, having prestige and having high status and power. But God does not define success the same way we do. In God’s eyes, success means discovering His will for your life and using that purpose for His glory rather than your own. When we stand before God in the judgement, it will not matter how the world thought of us. How successful we were according to the world’s standard will be meaningless. So how do you define success? Is the success you are seeking only temporary, or is it an eternal success that lasts? The purpose of this message is to encourage you to get a proper and Biblical understanding of what success truly means.
Do your fellow believers, strangers and the general public hold you in great esteem for your Christian walk and conduct? I just want to ask you this question and you can answer it for yourself. What brings you the greatest amount of joy when people talk about you? Do you want them to say, “you are rich, you are wise, you are so educated and intelligent, you are always the best and doing fantastic in sports,” and on and on they go? Or would you rather hear them say, “I love you because you are walking in truth with courage, confidence and commitment to Jesus Christ?”
Life is not about fame, life is not about popularity, or the abundance of things one possesses (Luke 12:15).
So, we have to be extra careful in terms of the life that we live on this earth. Our peace, success, comfort,
joy and happiness do not depend on having a great deal of wealth of this world. The things of the world
will not satisfy the desires of your soul. The Bible says that, “what shall profit a man if he gains the whole
world and loses his own soul” (Mat 16:26). So, it’s so important to know what you are living for, my
friend. The things of the world will not supply the needs of your soul. Many people have abundance of
things but they are discontented and they live in fear. They don’t have peace. Their abundance do them no good. God created you for success but don’t define success like the dictionary does. You may ask, how does the dictionary define success? Well, the first one I have found was achievement of something
attempted. That is a pretty broad definition, but success is not about things that we do or the accomplishment of an aim or purpose. Another definition I found in the dictionary was the gaining of fame, or prosperity.
So, this is how the dictionary defines success. Your security is not in your wisdom or in your popularity or
fame. It’s foolish to trust in these things when you have no relationship with God.
So, this is not a godly definition of success at all. There are a lot of people that have fame but it’s not
success. Hell is going to be occupied with a lot of people that you think are successful. The Bible is saying that what shall profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul. All the people who have been given all the credit and the ones that people just want to talk about, these are going to populate hell if they don’t know Christ. They are not successful. The Bible says if you gain the whole world and you lose your soul, you have no profit. So, what shall you exchange with your soul?
Having money or prosperity is not success. Just look around the world, we have seen people who seem to have got everything. They’ve got money, they’ve got prosperity in the eyes of men and fame. Everybody talks about them, everybody wants to be like them, and yet they end up committing suicide, they end up having their lives in shambles. They end up losing their soul. It profits them nothing.
Having money is not success. Success needs to be redefined. We have been influenced by the world more than we should. We think that means doing something grand or something big. Do you know that not everybody is called to do something big? It doesn’t mean that you should be limiting God. Therefore, don’t despise small beginnings. Some of us could not do what we were called to do if we didn’t have helpers, if we didn’t have people in the back room helping us. They may not be in front of the camera, but they are just a part of what we are doing. If we are not faithful with little, God will not increase it and give us more.
The world has made us have a wrong impression that doing something huge means your life is counted,
and if you are not doing something huge, your life isn’t counted for anything, but that’s not true. The way
that success has been presented is not a Godly concept at all. I want to encourage people who think they haven’t done much that you can succeed regardless of what God has called you to do. Some people think they are successful but all these temporary things are going to pass away.
God judges’ things differently from what we do. We look at the outside but God looks at the heart. And
there are many people that on the outside just look awesome, but in the heart, they are miserable. They
don’t have the joy and the peace that God gives. Let me tell you that there is nothing in this world that will minister to you and satisfy you as much as knowing that you are at the direct centre of God’s will. And that’s a successful life. So, make sure you’re pursuing things according to God’s will. It’s not about the abundance of things that you possess that makes you successful. It’s not about fame, popularity and so on.
And there may be many people who are hearing me right now or reading this that can’t say for sure that
they are doing what God has called them to do. You may love God, and may want God to use your life and bless you, but you don’t know for certain that you are where you are supposed to be in the sight of God.
That’s the reason why you may not be happy and satisfied, because God has given you a holy
dissatisfaction. God is stirring you up. This is how God motivates you.
God is telling you that there is something more. Many of you are praying against discouragement. “Oh God I just feel like I’m going nowhere”. Well, it could be the devil who is trying to condemn you but it could also be that it’s God who is trying to let you know that there is something more. There is such a thing as a holy dissatisfaction. The best way to live is to become a success in the sight of God.
How do you become a success? First, we need to challenge the current definition of success we have become accustomed to. Don’t define success like the dictionary, ‘the accomplishment of some goal, fame or prosperity.’ If you don’t know God and you are not doing what God has called you to do, or doing it the way He called you to do it, then you are a failure. I’m sorry, it doesn’t matter what size it is, it doesn’t matter how huge it is and how people are adoring it, what matters is what sort it is. It’s whether or not it’s pure. And it’s whether or not it is what God called you to do.
I tell you the truth, knowing God enables you to succeed. And that should be the attitude all of us should
have. The primary thing, or the foundational thing in your life that God will use to touch other people and
bless them is knowledge of God. Your development in knowing God and your relationship with God will
enable you to take the things that God shows you and the things that work in your life and share with other people. The only reason that God uses us is because of our relationship with Him. And that’s what allows us to reach out and touch people’s lives and bring glory to God.
Success is just presenting yourself as a Living sacrifice to God, and that means knowing God in an intimate way, and then renewing your mind so that you do whatever He has asks you to do. You do and prove God’s accepted perfect will in your life. If you do that, then you are a success – you are successful in the sight of God. God’s will may not be big. God has led people to do big things but He hasn’t led everyone else to do the same thing. God doesn’t lead everybody to become a minister to do the same thing. Sadly, however, we get into thinking that unless you do something which is really significantly big in the eyes of people, or something that grabs attention and gets you on the front pages or on television, that makes you significant.
But God has something for everyone of us to do and it may not be necessarily big in our eyes but it is
significant to the purposes of God. Success is knowing God and having an intimate relationship with Him.
Let me read you a scripture from Jeremiah 9:23-24:
“Let not the wise boast of their wisdom
or the strong boast of their strength
or the rich boast of their riches,
24 but let the one who boasts boast about this:
that they have the understanding to know me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness,
justice and righteousness on earth,
for in these I delight,”
declares the LORD.
Some other versions say glory instead of boast. But yes, boasting about our financial stability, boasting
about our popularity, boasting about our services to the community or our charity work is a waste of time.
In fact, when we stop to think about it, most of the things we spend our lives pursuing are ultimately of
very little value. Jesus devoted much of His time interacting with the outcast and throwaways of society,
reaching out indiscriminately to tax collectors, prostitutes, sinners, fishermen and common people.
You see, God chooses the despised, the weak and the destitute people of this world to serve His purpose and the only legitimate boasting is boasting in the Lord. There are many people who are considered to be “least” in society, but the Lord sees them as successful. So, if you want to boast, boast that you know the Lord and you have the understanding to know Him very well. Boast that He is the one who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight, declares the Lord. So, anyone who knows the Lord will put their trust in Him, and the Lord will never forsake them.
Nothing but a true knowledge of God can make a person successful. Success is not all these exterior things.
It’s all centred around Jesus, and it’s the best way to live. It’s all about knowing Jesus. It’s all about personal relationship with God, and if you have not tapped into this, and really began to experience the love and the pleasure of God, I assure you, there is nothing else in this world that will compare. So, the best thing to do is to know that if people are boasting, they should boast that they know the Lord, that they understand Him, and that He exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, that’s what God delights in. He said “Let not the wise boast of their wisdom or the strong boast of their strength or the rich boast of their riches, but we should boast that we know the Lord”. If you don’t know the Lord, then obviously you are not living the best life ever, but if you will like to know Him, then pray this prayer after me, saying every word from your heart,
Dear Lord, I recognise that I am a sinner and need to be saved.
I understand that Jesus died in my place and suffered the judgment of all of my sins.
I believe that Jesus rose from the dead and He is at the right hand of the father.
Lord Jesus, I surrender my Life to you.
Come and Live in my heart and be my Lord and saviour.
Thank You for saving me. AMEN!