Does God Want Us to Succeed?

Forget the knee jerk reaction of what everyone around you may say in response to this question. Take a few moments to consider what you think and believe about this in the quiet place of your heart.

Does God want us to have success?

And if so, what definition of success does God want us to have?

If He put a dream in your heart, does He want you to succeed in doing that?

I believe that God always wants us to succeed. I believe success is a longing in the human heart that we can’t repent away.By the end of this post you will probably see how I define success and then offer your opinion on these statements.

I also believe that people can succeed well or succeed badly.

There were two men in the Bible who were given the same destiny. Both Saul and David were given the opportunity to succeed, and both rose as mighty kings in Israel.

Both of these men failed miserably in major ways. One of them goes down in history as a success.

Why? What’s the difference between the two?

He wants us to have perseverance in faith and godly character in the midst of success. And in the midst of failure.

Timothy Keller, a pastor in NYC and an author I highly respect, recently said this on Facebook:

“Many times people think if God has called you to something, he’s promising you success. He might be calling you to fail to prepare you for something else through the failure.”

I agree with that, but only in the view of human success. God will often call people to things that will look like failure when looking through the world’s lens of what success is. But if we’re obedient despite the consequences and the ridicule, we’ve actually succeeded. Through the world’s lens of success, Jeremiah would have looked like a failure. Jeremiah was obedient, even to his own hurt. In the end, in God’s eyes, he succeeded.

What if God is calling you to fail? (And by fail, I mean do things that would look like failure in the eyes of the world.) Then, by all the means that you can, be obedient and press into God by prayer.

But what if God is calling you to succeed? What if He is calling you to be wildly successful? And by successful I mean in the eyes of the world as well as in His eyes.

Then pray. Pray as if your life depended on it, because it will. History is littered with the souls of those who succeeded badly. But if you lean into the Lord and trust Him to uphold you during times of plenty and times of great favor then you will see God’s favor still rest on you even when man’s favor has dimmed.

Just as a person can be tested by his or her pits and failures, a person can also be tested by affluence and success. Some people are called by God to make a copious amount of money, figures that would make most people stagger, but they are called to make that money so they will fund missions of mercy, justice and compassion.

A person can be called to failure and success at the same time. While in one aspect of my life I could experience great success, in another I could see great failure. I don’t even want to recall the amount of times when one of my farm animals died on the day when my book shot up to #1 in its category.

How can we succeed well?

We can realize that when God grants us favor with both Him and with people then it’s not about us, as if the blessings are something we should spend on ourselves or congratulate ourselves for. He has a plan for other people way beyond us.

When God calls us to do something that may look like failure, this, also, is not about us. Yes, we may have a change of heart and character through what God does, but it goes far beyond that. The few who heeded Jeremiah’s warnings were kept safe during a time of wrath. And how many of us have words from the book of Jeremiah hanging in our house?

For I know the plans that I have for you, says the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.

Jeremiah’s words have had impact upon people for centuries!

And then there are those who are called to wait. But I’ll save that discussion for another day.

So what are your thoughts? Does God want us to succeed in the eyes of the world? And do you think that’s more difficult than looking like a failure in the eyes of the world?