GOOD SUCCESS

This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have GOOD SUCCESS – Joshua 1:8

Many people in the world have totally wrong ideas about ‘Success’ that they waste all their lives seeking after vanities (Eccl.1:2). Unless we get our bearings right, we may veer out in the wrong direction, in pursuit of fame, fortune, popularity and pleasures, and end up discarded in the junkyard of failure, amidst the maggots of materialism!

God is the Author of all ‘good gifts’ – good success, promotion, and prosperity: Every GOOD GIFT and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning (Jam. 1:17). He is our Model for all that is good and successful! God spoke so much about “success” long before the world began to corrupt and counterfeit that word; and He is still speaking! He spoke to Joshua about how he could be guaranteed “Good Success” (Jos.1:8). It is not surprising that God qualifies the quality of the kind of success intended for His own children; God’s kind of success is nothing other than Good Success!

The qualifying adjective “good” implies that there can be similitudes of success, which when stripped of all external coverings, outward facade and deceptive ‘make-up’ would reveal their core ugliness, stink and emptiness. All over the world, we have witnessed the tragic ends of some of society’s superstars in the fields of music, entertainment and sports. Many of these individuals appeared to be the very symbols of success and portraits of prosperity. While on top of their games, they swam in fortune and basked in fame. Alas, many who spread laughter and thrill across the globe, could in their final days, neither smile nor laugh! Some ended up in the depths of debts; others got hooked in the deadly claws of addictions, while some became no better than “zombies.” Proverbs 1:32 says: “…the prosperity of fools shall destroy them.”

Robert H. Sculler wrote in his bestseller, Success is Never Ending; Failure is Never Final: “Success is…more than acquiring fame and fortune, fame and fortune are shallow goals unless they are a means to an end, a way to help others.” Good Success implies: Success without sorrows (Pro.10:22); Wealth without worries (Pro. 15:16); Prosperity without pains (Pro. 1:32); and Riches without regrets (Eccl. 5:19). Good Success means for you to be fruitful and fulfilled, and to finish whatever divine dreams God has placed in your heart; these are God’s enduring standards of success in life (2Tim.4:7-8).