Success Podcast Episode

But this humility that says, I am merely a servant who’s been blessed by God, and I want to continually make sure that my heartbeat is to know him and follow where he’s leading rather than my heartbeat to become about growing and more and more successful. Welcome everyone to Breaking Bread, the podcast brought to you by Apostolic Christian Counseling and Family Services. 

I’m glad to be with you all. Thanks for coming along. Brian Sutter is with me. Fred Witzig is with me as well. Welcome guys. Glad to be here. Yeah. Good to be here. So not long ago we talked about suffering. We live in a broken world and how do we cradle that suffering, that reality? How do we live with it? 

Today what we want to talk about is the flip side of the coin success. And there’s lots of commentary on how to be successful. Does that make sense? The bookstores are littered with very good ones. We have consumed them. I have consumed some of them myself. Yeah, you bet. Right? Because it’s important. 

How do you achieve success? But I’m not sure that there’s an equal number of resources that provide how to steward success. That is, once success is achieved, or should you achieve success, how do you steward that success? Just from my own personal inspection and from my thoughtful outward inspection of the world, success has its own bucket of vices. 

Am I right about that, Brian? Absolutely. Does it ever eke its way into counseling? There’s no question it is there and certainly shows up in the counseling room as much as the suffering side of things. Help us taste a little bit by saying here’s an example. So, examples that come to mind right off the top would just be when you’ve been successful in a sense of, let’s say financially, and you’ve been blessed with these resources, how do you manage those? 

Well, what do you do with those? Like that’s a heavy burden and being able to navigate the responsibility that comes with that and the questions that come with that. And even the criticism that comes with that can be very difficult for somebody to navigate. That’s a heavy burden.  

And then I think it wouldn’t be too hard to find examples where that pressure to maintain that business causes maybe some struggles with the marriage. Exactly. Or some passivity with their own children because we’re very engaged in other spheres. Is that a true statement? Yeah, there’s lots of fallout, whether it’s emotional or relational or spiritual that can take hold. 

And it takes, I would say, a lot of very purposeful focus and awareness of that. Fred, maybe let’s define success. In Deuteronomy 8, where God lays out his law, he talks about when I bring you into this land and you will prosper and in the first part, he talks about having plenty of food. 

Right? So, we can talk about success being, I have all the physical sustenance, which is a remarkable thing that we’ve achieved in Western society. We don’t have famine anymore. Right? Most people in our society have enough food or at least have access to food. Yes. Other parts of Deuteronomy talk about you will have lots of children or your farms will prosper, your businesses will prosper. So, to speak, you will have peace in your land. All these different things I think are big categories of earthly success. Yes. And let’s be clear at the outset, we’re not pooh poohing those things. This is not going to be a podcast that says we shouldn’t be striving for those things. 

Those things are our gifts from God. And that’s the context that God deals with success here is that these things can be for me, right? He’s going to bless his people. I think we also have to be very clear that following God doesn’t mean that we get a big farm and a big house and all that kind of stuff. 

He’s under no obligation to do that. This is not just for the one percent, this is for the vast majority of us that to embrace the fact that by God’s grace, we have been successful there are so many things like Fred’s talking about that we have been blessed with not necessarily because of faithfulness, but because that is part of what God gives his people and is a good thing that he wants us to enjoy, not necessarily always promised, but is a wonderful thing for us to embrace and accept. 

Yeah. But there’s a point to this. And in verse 10 of Deuteronomy 8, he says, when you have eaten and are full, then thou shalt bless the Lord thy God for the good land which he hath given thee. Beware that thou forget not the Lord thy God in keeping his commandments, and his judgments, and his statutes, which I command thee this day. Lest, when thou hast eaten, and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein, so forth, then thy heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God. Right? And then he says, what’s going to happen if you forget me? If you forget who, who gave you this? I testify against you this day that ye shall perish. 

And I’m fascinated by this term, perish. You will perish. Yeah. I think something happens to our soul. It happens to our relationships. It can happen to our business. We can actually lose our business or whatever. We begin to perish when our success leads us away from God. 

And that’s what I think Brian is talking about here, right? Yeah. Perish is the effect. The cause is forgetfulness of God. Yeah. And then it can be very easy to wrongly conclude that success is the problem. And that’s not at all what the Scriptures are teaching. They’re saying, be careful, know that this can, just like Deuteronomy 8 describes, like Fred was teaching us there, that this is a possible outcome. 

Be aware of that. But don’t come to the wrong conclusion that success is the problem. That is not the problem. The problem is universal, whether it’s success or suffering, and that is that our human tendency is to move away from God if we don’t continually, purposely pursue him, know him, and trust him. 

Yeah. And might I add, moving away from God or having a misconception of God. Oh, sure. Right? We spin all kinds of weird concepts of God with success. As well as with suffering. And that’s what we want to talk about today is how do we rightly think about success? Well, I think we’ve already settled on one of them and that is to always remember where it comes from and let our success glorify God. Yeah. Let our success bring us back in thankfulness to God and gratitude for God for what he is allowing us to do. Yeah. And which is what Brian was just saying there. Another thing I think that comes to mind there too, is just making sure in the midst of our success, that humility is something that we seek to hold on to. 

And which I think is certainly an outpouring of what Fred’s talking about there, but this humility that says, I am merely a servant who’s been blessed by God, and I want to continually make sure that my heartbeat is to know him and follow where he’s leading, rather than my heartbeat to become about growing and more and more success. 

Okay, so Brian, you partly answered this question, but I’m going to rephrase this question because I think there’s something more here. Let me paint a situation I don’t think is too far off. We give glory to God, and we have that humility, and God gave me this, and God has grown this, and isn’t God good, and all glory to goes to God, which is awesome, right? 

Well, some of the negative residual that might come from that type of vernacular is that people start to compare, that’s what the blessings of God are, that’s what success looks like. If I were in good standing with God, I would look like that, my success would look like that. And so, while we intend to give glory to God, perhaps we start to write stories in people’s heads about what success looks like. 

And so, my question to both of you is, how do we steward our success and communicate it to those who might not have it as we do? The parable of the talents comes to mind where different individuals are given different numbers or amounts of and it’s not a direct correlation between, okay, faithfulness equals this much. 

It’s more about you’re given this much, now be faithful with that. And for each of us to have that kind of perspective, to be able to celebrate what we’ve been given, to be able to celebrate what the other’s been given, and to see all of that by God’s grace and design, and in this together, that we’re a community together in that. 

And I think that’s a fantastic Scripture to point to in this question. It is. And in fact, isn’t his commendation the same to each one, well done? Yes, he’s equally pleased, and he’s not doing what we often do, which is, well, that person’s a lot more successful, and I’m not. You know, then we start evaluating ourselves, comparing ourselves, worrying, afraid that, you know, I’m just not a good Christian. 

I’m not doing as much for God, right? Or I’m not as fruitful or what all these things that we can just work ourselves into. And God is saying, that’s not the point of it all. But what would it look like for an employer to have that mindset? Because if truth be told, we really groom and award, do we not? The one that took the six talents and made 12 out of it. 

I mean, that’s our system. Does that make sense? Yeah. Out of one side of our mouth, we say one thing, but everything looks a little bit different. What would it look like to have the mindset of God as we relate to our employees, for example? Well, I can think of a conversation that I overheard, or I was in many years ago, and it speaks to something like your question, maybe a little bit different context. 

There’s a conversation between a very, very successful professional, I’ll keep it rather vague, but a very successful, very wealthy business owner, medical professional, speaking to somebody who did not make very much money, did not have a big house. And so therefore would fit this scenario where you have, wow, here’s somebody that we honor. And then we got somebody else who doesn’t have very much. And this professional told this poorer person, you know, what I really admire about you is your sons have really turned out well. You really trained them well to be responsible, to take life seriously, to do these certain things and really praised this poor father for the good things that he had done. 

And this was probably 15 years ago. And I still remember that as an example of being able to point out somebody’s talents and the blessing of those talents. That probably would be skipped over by most people in the world. So let me put my finger on what I think is really important by what you said, and that is having a very robust view of success. 

So, when that individual who might be measured in dollar signs, looked at another individual, he didn’t evaluate based on dollar signs because success is much bigger than that. And he saw success in that other individual. And the core of that, I think, is just that perspective that says, each human being has been created in the image of God, that there is value and worth and dignity. 

And we need to find that in each other, whether there’s a lot of material success or not as much, maybe there’s more success relationally. And all of those things have value and importance. It also speaks to, I think, why we pursue success. I think the Bible is very clear. Paul told Timothy that those who would be rich, those who want to be rich, who set their heart on being rich, fall into all sorts of snares and I mean you read that section there in 1 Timothy 11. They drown men in destruction and perdition if that’s where your heart is going. If you’re setting your heart on that then you’re setting yourself up for misery really but if you set your heart on using success for God’s purposes, then it already frames you towards understanding a proper view of success, and it helps to keep you from going in these poor directions. 

Fred, I want to come back here a little bit and bring a little bit of history. Okay, because you are a historian, and to be a good historian, you have to be a fairly good sociologist and anthropologist, because all of those things weave their way economics, weave themselves into history. Success as we’ve defined it is a part of the history story of the world. 

Don’t you think? I remember Bruce Shelley speaking in his book, Christian History in Plain Language. He made this very astute point that of all the span of history, only in the last couple of generations has there been ease of life. And that really hit me right between the eyes. 

To say my earthly life experience is vastly different than nearly every person that’s lived and died because of, not success that I’ve achieved, but success that I have come to enjoy. That makes sense. Absolutely. All right. So, what are we to make of history? What values have we lost because of it, Fred? 

Yeah, that’s a really interesting question. First of all, you’re exactly right about the lifestyle I don’t know if we understand. I really don’t think we understand how phenomenally materially wealthy that everybody in the United States is. In the Western world, actually most of the world now, is the conquest of disease. 

The average lifespan as late as 1800, in a place like France was 40 years old, almost half of what it is today. So, it happened relatively quickly and it is just ridiculous how wealthy we are. However, it has come with a cost. It comes at the cost of, I think you could make a pretty good case that it’s come at the cost of community. 

It comes at the cost of, in some cases, justice. Some of that success came due to the use of slavery and other forms of economic arrangements that took a heavy toll on people’s lives. And there’s also something else that I think is also really important to understand. And a brother brought this out in a sermon recently. 

Reading the book of Ecclesiastes, he pointed out how much we’ve been successful. And yet the more we are successful, we are in a material way. We are proving Ecclesiastes, right? And that is our soul inside is dying. We are a lonely people. We are hopeless people. We’re desolate people in the midst of all of our wealth. 

We’re an anxious people, fearful people. The irony is tremendous. But Ecclesiastes warned us about this as it got into Deuteronomy and everything else, but there’s hope. Philippians 2:4 says, look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others or the interests of others, pursue the interests of others. 

I think as Christians, we should be more intent on seeing how we can cause other people to be successful than on how we ourselves can be successful. And when we do this, we are a tremendously powerful witness for Jesus Christ. So, we’re to have that same mind, that same mind of emptying ourselves and pursuing the interests of others just like Jesus did to the extreme in ways that we can’t do. 

He pursued our own salvation. Okay, so let’s talk about Jesus, what do we learn from Jesus as it relates to success? I don’t know if this fits or not, but one thing that I think of in this context is the parable of the Good Samaritan. And it’s one of those situations where Jesus comes, and he challenges us the way he always does. 

And the religious folks in the parable do the right thing according to part of the law. They follow what they need to do to remain pure in one sense. And yet, as the story goes, the most unlikely of the group follows the highest of the law, and that is to love, and to serve, and to bless this person who’s hurting. 

But it’s this lesson where Jesus says, yeah, love God first, and love others. And in that, what that means, look out for the man who’s hurting. Look out for those places that you can use what I’ve given you to share my message of hope and life. And you get the opportunity to emulate that as you walk through life and are my people. 

And I think that’s one of the places of Christ teaching there. With Christ over and over again, that was it. Excellent example, Brian. He challenges the scripts that we run in our head about things, the conclusions. Jesus, time and time again, rewrites our reasoning. Okay. So, I’m going to try something here. 

I just want our listeners to think about this. What reaction do we have when we learn of a middle-aged adult working an entry level retail job? We’re behind the counter at McDonald’s. Do we not have scripts running in our head? I think we do. That’s my point. I think you’re exactly right. I think the teaching in James, you know, don’t honor the person who comes in with the wealth. 

But we do that in very different ways. You know, I find myself, to my shame, as I interact with people over the lunch hour, like, boy, that person over there, they’re interesting. Or I’d be interested in their thoughts. That’s my point. And I, sadly, discount the person who’s right in front of me for whatever reason. 

And I think exactly what you’re talking about, and Christ says no. That, Brian, is not acceptable. That’s not the way to think about people. And challenges that, and I have to be honest with what’s in my heart. And needing that to be shaped and reformed by the Scriptures. So, historically speaking, one of the tremendous lessons of Christian history of church history is the power of not doing what you two just talked about. 

Yeah. Of being snooty, of valuing people based on earthly success and that sort of thing. And that is throughout the history of the church. There have been countless stories of Christians of every rank who pursued the success of other people without prejudice, without looking down their nose. And that attracts attention, probably more than anything else. 

When we empty ourselves like Jesus did, of our rights, looking after other people’s interests, without prejudice, anybody who needs help, that is a very unnatural thing, and captures attention like almost anything else. Yeah. I want to land the plane now with some very practical things to think about. 

Think about them like tips. Here’s a tip. Or think about them as a litmus test, like, on my own success, stewardship, health, right? The one thing that comes to mind just as a question to wrestle with or consider is what’s the motivator behind it? There can be lots of different motivators, but certainly one that I’ve seen a lot of would be fear, like fear of I’m not going to have enough or it’s not going to be okay. 

Or what if X happens or, and fear is this driver that says I’ve just got to pile up or I’ve got to achieve a lot of. or else something really bad. You’re really getting to that concept of security and then how we communicate that to our children is very important as well. We can communicate either, it’s good to do your best and we can also communicate to them that your best is not good enough. 

Your best is not good enough. While we might have success well calibrated in our own minds and hearts, we may be portraying something very different to our children, to our families, to our onlookers. And we need to take responsibility for that too, don’t we? Yeah. It’s good. And very closely connected to that would just be this idea of self-worth or value for an individual and what we’re communicating. 

And I think to be very purposeful that accidentally it’s very easy for us to communicate that your worth and value comes from what you are able to achieve as well as what other people think of you. And instead shifting to this place of being able to communicate and teach in our own heart, but as well as others that value and worth comes from being created in the image of God and being a part of his family. 

And that is a two-pronged statement as well, Brian, the value and worth we place on ourselves, but the value we place on others is at play also. I know another thing that we can certainly get pulled into is something the Scriptures tell us not to do, but we so often do, and that is just comparing ourselves. 

And instead, I think the Scriptures would encourage us to celebrate, to recognize what we have, to rejoice in those that have, whether it’s less or more, and being that side kind of a mindset. So, what you’re saying is don’t measure your success comparatively. Good. To see success as a blessing from God for the purpose of us being thankful, being grateful, honoring him, worshiping him, and then stewarding the success in such a way that we show others the love of Jesus Christ. 

Ecclesiastes, at one sense, is very pessimistic. It’s all meaningless, the preacher says. all these things under the sun. But there’s actually some incredibly good news in Ecclesiastes that basically says no, it’s just not in the houses that you build, the vineyards that you build. It’s not in the success and the money that you accumulate. 

It’s all very, very basic. It’s companionship. It’s fearing God. It’s following his commandments. It’s enjoying those things that your hands have labored for. Oh, that’s accessible to everyone. Right? Yeah. Isn’t that awesome? That success is not achieved by great effort as much as it’s received by the Creator. 

Isn’t that a special thing? And thanks brothers for bringing this topic to bear and helping us think about success. We’ve all been inspired to view success maybe more holistically, maybe more accurately, maybe more biblically. And I think that’s going to go a long way in our relationships. It’s going to go a long way in our mental health. 

It’s going to go a long way in our spiritual health, right? In our family dynamics, so on and so forth. So, thanks both of you for being here. We trust that the Lord was in this conversation. We’ll speak to you about it. So, thanks for being with us. Goodbye.