Good grades. Good social life. Close to Jesus. Scoring goals. That’s how I’ve defined success for a majority of my life. If I was able to accomplish all of those things I felt like I was in good shape and was living a prosperous life. If one wasn’t going the right way it was usually just a passing season and I was able to still find success in a different area.
Success can look different to everyone. For some, success looks like starting a non-profit. For others, it’s being an amazing stay-at-home parent. For others, it can be keeping their room clean. We all have different victories and visions of success. For me, success revolved heavily around my performance on the soccer field as well as my relationship with Jesus.
The question that I’ve been wrestling with over the last few weeks is, “What does success in my life look like from God’s perspective?” My ultimate goal is to be successful in God’s eyes. One quote I read from Bill Johnson that convicted me says, “Most of the goals of the modern church can be completed without God. All we need is people, money, and a common objective. Determination can achieve great things. But success is not necessarily a sign that the goal was from God.” I have lived my entire life believing that if I was successful, it was a combination of my hard work as well as it being what God wanted, and if I wasn’t successful, I did something wrong or didn’t work hard enough.
Have we considered that maybe the times we’re unsuccessful are actually successful to God and the expansion of His Kingdom?
With the mindset I had, it made praising God rather difficult when things didn’t go “successfully”. What does it look like to give God glory when we’ve put in all the work, yet don’t succeed? We equate a good work ethic with the means that we will be successful. But that’s not always true.
I have worked so hard to get to where I am as a professional soccer player. And anyone on the outside would probably say I’ve been pretty successful thus far in my season. From June to August I thought otherwise.
I was convinced that I was gonna score many, many goals, because I believed that God was gonna use my success on the soccer field to make His name known. Me having success on the field would be a miracle in and of itself considering how I even made it to the pros. What I’ve been struggling to figure out is how can I, after not scoring goals, still praise God, despite me putting in hours of work, both on the field and in my relationship with Him. According to my definition, I’m not being successful. Success on the soccer field for the last 8 years of my life was defined by how many goals I scored, and for the first time, the definition of success had changed, and I didn’t know what it looked like.
I had a friend tell me “Success with Jesus might not equal getting the best score on a test or scoring the most goals. Jesus might have something completely different for us, and we need to be okay with that.” This hit me. IT’S OKAY IF I’M NOT SCORING GOALS. Jesus isn’t waiting for me to be the best soccer player I can be, He’s asking me to be more like Him, reflecting all that He is, and building His kingdom. Could being a great soccer player be that? Of course, but it doesn’t have to be.
The devil really likes to plant one awful, evil lie in your mind and let it fester into every thought. I began to believe the lie that the reason I wasn’t playing well and scoring goals was because I wasn’t close enough to Jesus. Well that was BOGUS. Some of the most successful people in the world don’t know Jesus, and to think that success on Earth is equivalent or related to my relationship with Jesus is a lie from the pit of hell.
I prayed against those lies for weeks, hoping that I would eventually see the truth and recognize that God was working incredibly through me, I just had to have an eternal lens on. I remember yelling at God saying, “Okay God, you wanted me to Your vessel, now let me score and play well so I can show people who You are.” LOL at that request to God.
I got very frustrated with God, praying over and over again to not let my performance on the soccer field have any effect on my faith, but it was clear that I was losing trust in God because He wasn’t coming through like I wanted Him too. I had been telling Him what success in my life was gonna look like, but He was showing me that success can come in a different way.
To give an example of a success different from what I thought, God has used me off the soccer field this season in so many ways to make His name known. I’ve engaged in multiple conversations with teammates who don’t believe about who God is to me and planting a seed in their mind of who the Father is. That sounds pretty freaking successful in terms of Kingdom-building. But I was only focused on what I thought success was--scoring goals. God had to shift my perspective and focus and remind me that He’s always gonna use me to be successful in His Kingdom, it might not be what I had in store, but it’s gonna be EFFECTIVE and BETTER.
The overall point I’m trying to make is this—God defines success far different than we do. And sometimes we are blessed with a lot of earthly success, but that might mean nothing to God. The question is, can you praise Him when His success might look different than what you want, and may even me you not succeeding in areas? Do you still have the vision to see what success He IS doing in your life?
My friend spoke life over me saying “You’re gonna make an impact on people whether you’re a successful pro soccer player, an average pro soccer player, a student, a PA, or whatever career you choose.” And that’s the straight truth from the Father that I believe He wants to speak into You today. Whether you are successful in the world’s eyes or not doesn’t matter one bit. He’s gonna make you successful in the heavenly sense and that is much more worth it.
It’s incredibly humbling to know that I don’t have to worry about what success looks like in my life. It takes all the pressure off, and allows space for God to move in my life—bringing about the eternal success of His plans.
I’m currently reading Crazy Love by Francis Chan, and he says, “Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter.” What matters is determined by God, so figure out what that is in your life, and thank God for it.
You may feel ineffective or unsuccessful, but I promise you that there is an area of your life where you are being successful. Trust in God’s bigger plan that you are being used and being an effective force for what He is doing here on Earth. If God was done using me, He’d take me home to be with Him, but I’m still here, I’m still doing SOMETHING. There’s a purpose, there’s success in my life, and I love that I get to live another day trying to achieve it.