THE SECRET OF SUCCESS

​​​​​Look up success on Amazon and the results will show (as of this writing) 194,974 books on the topic. After the economic rug was pulled out from under me and my family at the beginning of the great recession, I read only about 80 of those on the list, and here is what I discovered.

Some philosophies of success reveal a dark side. The way to overcome poverty includes a willingness to give up everything in order to achieve riches and an invitation to enter a temple of hidden knowledge to climb the staircase to high achievement and wealth accumulation. There can be an argument made that this quest is not unlike the desire of humanity in the Old Testament to build a tower, the tower of Babel, to reach heaven. Yes, at its worst, pursuing riches can lead into an occult, antichrist system. The Old Testament term for making anything other than God the center of our lives is idolatry. That included worshipping Baal and serving foreign gods. The one true and everlasting God, the creator of the universe forbade it. After telling his readers in 1 John that they were in the last hour, the time of antichrists, the apostle’s final word was to guard yourselves from idols or false gods. 

On the other hand, popular success and self-improvement literature is rarely either completely evil or completely good. Often it includes a seductive mixture of both, so Christians reading it should exercise discernment not to be led into idolatry. God is able to bless a believer in Christ with great wealth without sorrow through honoring God in all things. Compromising his or her relationship with God is not required to achieve financial freedom. Godly principles, or principles that the Bible affirms, can be at the heart of sustained wealth creation. Even new age philosophies of success are laced with some concepts consistent with the Bible, but here is the problem. 

A little leaven leavens the whole lump. Jesus said to be seeking first, that means preeminently, the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. God told us to be holy, meaning wholly separated to Him and His purpose, as He is holy. Any presence of sin, evil, or selfish desire deceitfully corrupts the system entirely, which leads to why Christ came in the first place, to forgive us and establish the authority of God over all creation and put everything, every stronghold, every philosophy, under His feet.

As God come in the flesh, Jesus came to destroy every authority, principality, and power raising itself in opposition to God —those mountains must be made low— and equip people to live forever exclusively under Christ’s reign in the Kingdom of God, characterized by unblemished holiness and uncompromising truth. Christ came to deliver us from all the corruption that is in the world through lust, even the corrupting influence of the spirits of the age. 

The truth is that wealth can be part of success but all successful people do not have millions of dollars, and no matter how financially successful people become, they still must face death in the end. In that light, the ultimate success must involve somehow destroying the power of death, and there is only One who holds the keys of death and hades because He has overcome it. His name is Jesus. The culmination as Paul describes it is“...when he hands over the Kingdom to God the Father, after having put an end to every rulership, yes, to every authority and power. For he has to rule until he puts all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be done away with will be death,” (1 Cor. 15:24-26).

Jesus is the first-fruits of the resurrection from the dead, and before He destroys death, He will come back to make us alive in His presence. Up until He comes, we must be overcoming in obedience to and in loving relationship with Him. Christ must begin to reign in us and through us, making the kingdoms of this world (those of every rulership, power, and authority) the kingdoms of our God. This how we are made ready and can ready the way for His return.

The secret of success comes from winning the battle over the evil inclination that God cannot not tolerate but exists inside each of us and in the world. The good news is that Christ through His His resurrection from the dead after living a sinless life in complete obedience to God’s word including dying on the cross, has already defeated sin’s stronghold in the earth, and His will overcomes the sinful inclination in each of us. The blood of Jesus has the power to cleanse us from every sin and destroy all the works of the enemy.

We have to prepare for the success that God will, in fact, bring about in His perfect timing. To be prepared, every valley must be lifted up, every mountain must be made low. The way must be made straight for the Lord’s return.

A crucial issue, or deep valley (to continue the metaphor), is our being born of flesh and blood, which puts us all in the image of Adam and at a clear disadvantage when it comes to becoming pure as God is pure. Being born of flesh and blood is problematic because our being in the line of Adam having the experiential knowledge of good and evil means that in our present tainted state we cannot inherit the kingdom of God. Obviously, we need to be changed.

We need to be prepared somehow for that change to take place, in order to be welcomed into the holy presence of Jesus when He returns. The good news is that God has made a way for us to serve Him through Christ’s will in the Spirit through the love of the truth. This makes us ready, so we can be brought to perfection, though none of us has attained it.  

In the lowest valley of King David’s life, after coveting the beautiful wife of one of his soldiers and impregnating her while her husband fought against the king’s enemies, David sent a letter by the hand of that same soldier commanding his own murder. Carrying out David's deadly plan even put the army of Israel in harm’s way. After David’s blasphemy, he received a prophetic message and turned to Yahweh for forgiveness. God renewed a right spirit within him, and God will do the same for us.
 
King David asked the Lord to make him know truth in his innermost, so that others who sinned would know they too can be forgiven. This is the secret to success that the Lord in His mercy has allowed to come down to us in these last days through the example of David. Lord, make us know and love truth in our innermost. 

If God can forgive David’s selfishness, lust, adultery, and murder, the layer upon layer of sin, and restore the king's relationship with God, then God can forgive each one of us. He can also use the same power He demonstrated in forgiving us to forgive those whom we love, so we all can be brought to the goal. We can only reach the goal together.

The love of the truth is the secret. It is how we are saved. On the other side, deceitful unrighteousness works secretly in lawlessness leading to the destruction of the ungodly. We who come to know Christ, however, are as Paul said, chosen for sanctification and salvation, "to which He did call you through our good news to the acquiring of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thessalonians 2:14).

THE ROAD TO ACQUIRING GLORY

In the latter part of 1 Corinthians 15, Paul described the resurrection as the very heart of his habitual walk with the Lord and why the apostle was willing to die daily as he faced the hardships of doing God’s will. Daily dying is how we begin to experience the blessings of freedom from sin and our inheritance in Christ. It conditions us for the resurrection from the dead when our bodies will go from weakness to power, dishonor to glory, corruption to incorruption, natural to spiritual, decay to imperishability, mortal to immortality.

The resurrection power of Christ is how we will bear the image of Jesus from heaven instead of the sinful image of Adam. We will be the untainted image of God as Jesus is, and we will be the line of Jesus as we were in the line of Adam. At Christ’s appearing, instead of earthly we will become heavenly. We shall all be changed.   

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