A Measure of Success

I felt like I had poured all of myself into my children. Now the success or failure of my life rested on their soldiers, at least that is how I felt. I watched as one of my children made choices that were contrary to what I had taught them. I began to fall into a depression. Over and over I heard,"All you have done has been in vain!" That's when I got a telephone call from someone who had lived with us many years earlier. I picked up the phone and heard,"I just called you to tell you that you have not lived your life in vain."

Upon what should I base the success or failure of how I've lived my life. I realize now how unfair it was for me to place that heavy burden on the back of my child. The girl who called to tell me that my life had not been lived in vain was someone who I had invested much of my life in yet when she left my home I could not see that anything I had done or said had been of value. God put her back in my life just when I needed her to teach me how to measure success.

If I measure the success or failure of my life by how it effects those around me then I must count the lives of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel,and most of the prophets to be utter failures. I read in Ephesians 2:10 "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before-hand , that we should walk in them." To measure the success or failure of my life I can't look around me. I must look to God. If God is responsible for preparing the good works he has for me to do then he is also responsible for the outcome.

The main ingredient in understand this is faith. Not faith in my abilities or in outcome of my efforts. Because I have surrendered to the Lordship of Jesus Christ my success or failure is found in him. When I read about the people listed in Hebrews 11 I see some of them experiencing miracles while others are suffering ,"mocking and flogging,and even chains and imprisonment...of whom the world was not worthy." I see people who have chosen to live their lives here on earth but with their fixed on the promises of God and I want to be one of them.

Lord Jesus, thank you for letting me have a part in the work you are doing in my generation. Thank you that measure of the success of my life is not found in who I am but in who you are. And, oh yes, thank you for putting friends in my life to help me when I get tangled up in my own importance.