What do you value most in life? What would you willing to sacrifice for?
God has a purpose and plan for every person. God did not put us on earth just to occupy space. For God to be able to use us to the fullest according to his purpose, each of us have to prioritize what matter most, in other words we need to clarify our values, evaluate what is important to us and then, our actions should be in agreement with our values.
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There are four things that need to be done to achieve real success: choose the source of your value, clarify what’s important, change your lifestyle to match what you say with what is important, and check yourself daily to see if you’re continuing to say and do what you value. In the last issue, we discussed the first of the four things that need to be done. Now, we go to the second important thing to be done.
Second – Clarify What is Important
Make a list of what you consider to be the most important things in life and then attach a scripture (Bible verse) to them.
Do this for a couple of reasons: first, you need to do this because most of the values that you have you didn’t choose. You didn’t choose them. You just assimilated them without thinking as you grew up. You picked them up from people around you.
Some of them you got were good and some of them weren’t so good. Some of them are self-defeating and some of them are actually hurting your life. But you didn’t automatically sit down and choose the value. You just automatically accepted it. You’ve never really thought them through.
Second, you need to write out your values because we rarely think about our values until we have a crisis. Then, all of a sudden, we get interested in, “What’s the purpose of life?” When everything’s going great, you don’t stop and ask the tough questions.
What happens is, you wait until a crisis occurs like: bankruptcy, divorce, major illness, death of a loved one … and, then all of a sudden, you start asking questions: “What am I here for? Or “What really is the purpose of life?”
Why wait for a crisis? Why not clarify or evaluate your values now? Don’t wait for a crisis to come.
Knowing what you value most is so important that we all need to do something about it. What is important to you? If you are serious about it, try to make a list of the ten most important values that you want to build your life on.
Furthermore, you need to define what is success to you. What is your definition of success? Why is that important? Because if you don’t come up with a personal definition of success, other people will define it for you.
And that’s a big mistake because automatically, you will define success and failure by the values you hold. Success is a word we use all the time in our society. The common meaning of success is when you reach your goal – you are successful.
Base on the above common meaning of success, if your goal is to rob a bank or to murder somebody and you achieved it, you are successful, but the consequence, you will go to jail. Your definition of success should be base on your values. For Christian believers their values come from the word of God – the Bible.
The true definition of success is the feeling you get when you live out your values. That’s what success really is. Success is not a destination. It’s not a goal, or an achievement. It’s a journey, a progression. Success is not an achievement. Why? Because, if your success is based on an achievement, somebody is going to surpass your achievement down the road.
Every record is broken eventually. Once your achievement is surpassed, what happens to your success? It goes down the drain. Real success is when you decide what values are really important to you in life and you bring your life into alignment with them.
When you have a personal definition of success based on your own values: nobody can ever take that feeling of success away from you and, you can be successful at any and every stage of life. The starting point is you have to decide what’s important to you. Decide what matters most.
If you see this is difficult and are not too sure how to start, try to think what your life is going to be like in ten years time, twenty years, and thirty years. Look at it from eternity, on God’s judgment day. Ask this question, “What is going to last?” What’s going to last ten years from now? Twenty or thirty years from now? For eternity? How much of what I’m doing right now is going to matter in twenty or thirty years?”
The things that don’t matter, maybe you shouldn’t spend so much time on them. Maybe you shouldn’t spend anytime on them.
If you apply that question, “What’s going to last?” to the world’s value system of pleasure, possession and prestige, nothing would last, for pleasure, possession and prestige are all temporary. Moses rejected the world value system. (Hebrew 11:24).
The bottom line is this, 1 John 3:17 “The world and its desires [the values of the world] will pass away but those who do the will of God will live forever.” First, you choose your source – where am I going to get my values, the Word (Bible) or the World. Second, you clarify or evaluate what’s important and you make a list of the things that you really believe are valuable.
In succeeding issues of this paper the writer will discuss the reaming two more things above mentioned to achieve real success in life – the biblical meaning of success.
To find the answers of the increasingly complex problems and frightening developments in the world today, Word Became Flesh Ministries, a non-denominational, Bible based church is inviting you to its free interactive Bible study on the Six Basic Bible Lessons. For details, see its invitation in this paper under “GIVE GOD A CHANCE.”