SUCCESSFUL

The Lord was with Joseph, and he was a SUCCESSFUL man; and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian – Genesis 39: 2 (NIV).

Success – good success – is fundamental among the blessings that God has prepared and provides for His people. God delights in blessing you. It is His good pleasure to see you blessed in every area of life. Jesus is interested in your success and indeed, your total well-being. The Lord commanded Joshua: “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” (Jos.1:8). Success is obviously in God’s Vocabulary. His definition of success however differs to the world’s definition. The world measures success based on what you have done, what you have achieved, and what you have accumulated. It is centred entirely on you focusing all your time, efforts, and resources in the pursuit of possessions, power, popularity, pleasure, and other paraphernalia of materialism.

The world’s model of success is like Lot’s “Sodom and Gomorrah,” “well watered everywhere” but uncertain and unstable, being built on a shaky foundation (Gen.13:10-11). Although it may have the outward appearance of the good life, it is temporal, transient, shallow and superficial. Worldly wealth can dissipate like smoke and easily slip away like the shifting desert sands. The wise man lamented: “There is a sever evil which I have seen under the sun: riches kept for their owner to his hurt. But those riches perish through misfortune; when he begets a son, there is nothing in his hand” (Ecc.5:13-14). Paul also warned: “Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in UNCERTAIN RICHES but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy” (1Tim.6:17). Jesus pronounced the ultimate verdict: “Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses” (Lk.12:15).

Genesis 39:2 shows that true success is more of about who you have than what you have. Joseph, as a slave in Potiphar’s house, literally had nothing materially. He had no bank accounts and no natural connections with people of affluence, but he had everything because the Lord was with him! The divine Presence made the difference. The material things that you have accumulated or are feverishly trying to amass will not make you successful. It is the Presence of the Lord in your life that makes you a Success. Your relationship with Him is the much you need for every success in life. You need to start pursuing God more than you’ve been pursuing things. When the Lord is with you, you are already a Success – that has become your job description. All your struggling, willpower, determination, discipline, and self-effort, as commendable as they may be, cannot do what the presence of the Lord can do with ease.

When the Lord is with you and you appropriate the essence of His Presence through His Word, you’ll become successful in every endeavour in life. Scriptures consistently confirm that whenever the Lord was with the children of Israel in battle, they were never defeated, and every military campaign resulted in overwhelming victory. The Lord is with you to help you, to empower you, to turn things around for you, and to make great things happen in you, around you, through you, and for you. In the light of Joseph’s testimony, you too can declare: “The Lord is with me, and I am a successful person. Jesus is with me, so everything I do will succeed”! It doesn’t matter what your circumstances are saying. Temptations and false accusation from the likes of Potiphar’s wife cannot corrupt God’s Presence in your life. Neither can persecution or the ‘prison seasons’ of life obliterate it. Even in prison, “the LORD was with him; and whatever he did, the LORD made it prosper” (v23). Ultimately, nothing could keep this successful man down in the dungeon until he was promoted to His palace in splendour!