How do you define "success"?

During my first year of graduate school, I was wrestling with what it meant to be successful while a student. I went to my pastoral theology professor with the question, and he pointed to John 15:5, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”

His point was that if I kept relationship with Jesus as my focus, then success or “fruit,” as the Gospel of John reads, would come. Granted, it may not look like what I expect it to look like, and I may not even notice it as success, but fruit will be born as I abide in Him.

My understanding of success, then, is relationally-based, not merely based on what I do at work, where I work, or with whom I associate in the professional world. Granted, I still struggle with how to measure success. It’s just that I am learning to base it primarily upon how I’m relating with Jesus—not to mention how that relationship affects my relationships with myself, others, and the rest of His created order. And while I can become works-oriented in how I relate with Christ, my relationship with Him always will be based on grace, while success as we often understand it, is based largely on works.

And it’s the grace-over-and-above-works reality that further informs my understanding of success. [Read more...]