The word success has been thrown around continuously in our society, but with less emphasis on its spiritual view or meaning, success is conceptualize as the state or condition of reaching a defined range of expectations. This maybe viewed as the opposite of failure. Looking vividly on the worldly definition of success, it is disastrous and adaptive it relives on things that are temporary and totally ignores things that are laying and eternal. The word success revolves around status, pleasure, power prestige and wealth. At a certain time, we've all been a victim of this line of thinking. We feel we are successful when we are popular and have lots of stuff and also make loads of money.
On the contrary, the meaning of success fron the spiritual perspective is distinctively different from the worldly view of success.
Success is about who we are, our integrity our faith and our character. Success is obeying God as led by the spirit of God, triggered by the love of God and geared directly towards the elevation of the kingdom of God.
The true success evolves from believing in God's command, repenting and believing in Jesus Christ, following him in all areas of life. Success is not qualified by what we do or the possessions we accumulate but by our discipline, honesty, loyalty and love amongst others.
The scripture gives us a strong antidote to misguided ideas of success. Through Jesus "parable of the talent " (Matthew 25:14-30) we learn that success is a product of our own work, success is as a result of diligently working for something. The servant with five and two talents were industrious, for they went at once and traded with them, and they made five and two more respectively. They used all the talents that was given to them by their master without to produce the expected return.
success in the spiritual perspective does not involve working for a selfish purposes. In most circumstances the worldly success is through competition or envy, it is done in other to meet up with the standard set by the world whether it is done in an illegal or legal way. This is contrary to the spiritual perspective of success. Jesus Christ said in Matthew 6:19-21, "lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, were moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves breakthrough and steal, but lay up for yourselves in heaven, were neither moth or rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not breakthrough nor steal.
It can also be seen in 1st King 2:3 that the worldly view of success is different from the spiritual view. In this bible portion, King David told his son which he was about to die stubborn to follow the teachings of the lord and then he will be successful. David did not tell his son to build up his kingdom with great armies nor gather wealth from other land, nor defeat his enemies in battle in other to measure up to success.
Instead his formula for success was to follow God and obey him also, when Solomon became king, he didn't ask the lord for wealth and power, but for wisdom and discernment in other to lead Gods people. It was through this wisdom that he could settle the problems in his kingdom and this made him a successful king;
It was not wealth and power.
The spiritual perspective is in seeking for Gods kingdom first, as such in Matthew 6vs25-33. In Jesus reply, he said that God's kingdom should be the first to ask for and every other thing, which include power, wealth and success would be added to the list.
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