Not long ago I received an email from a friend that caused me to pause. I want to read you part of it.

"Most Western pastors lead churches that are not growing numerically. Many [of these men] feel they are failures. But they may be more successful in God's eyes than others whose churches are booming, but whose growth is simply due to their catering to egos.

So be careful of that impostor known as "success." You may 'succeed,' but not in God's way." Then he ends with this prayer, "The one thing that matters, Lord Christ, is that you are honored. May that be my [our] consuming ambition. Amen."

When I read the sentence "You may succeed but not in God's way" I had to stop and think. I could pastor a church that's a success in the eyes of men but a failure in the eyes of God. And I could pastor a church that's a success in the eyes of God but a failure in the eyes of men.

Illustration: Are you familiar with the name, Chuck Colson? He was Richard Nixon's hatchet man . . . " convicted during the Watergate trials. Now he's the Executive Director of Prison Fellowship. Excerpt from Chuck Colson's Jubilee

"By the time you read this, we will have dedicated our new national offices near Washington D.C. As a result of this and other recent expansions, many people have written me [saying] to the effect that 'God is obviously blessing Prison Fellowship's ministry.' As much as I am sincerely certain that God is, indeed, blessing us, I believe even more certainly that it's a dangerous and misguided policy to measure God's blessing by standards of visible, tangible, material "success." The inference is that when things are prospering "God is blessing us" and, conversely, that when things are going poorly, or unpublicized, God's blessing is not upon the work or it is unimportant . . . We must continuously use the measure of our obedience to the guidelines of His Word as the real - and only - standard of our 'success,' not some supposedly tangible or glamorous scale. (Hughes 37-38)

This morning I want to suggest that it's possible to be a failure in the eyes of the world but a success in the eyes of God. And this idea is disconcerting to some people.

Somewhere along the way, some folks have come to equate success with numbers and money, the accumulation of wealth and influence. It may be time to thoughtfully reevaluate our thinking that defines success.

God says we can have all the things that look like success and still be a failure. Listen to what Jesus says to people who define success by the amount of money they have. "What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his own soul?"

Bill Gates wrote the following. It sounds like a commentary on the words of our Lord. "It [Success] seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose. And it's an unreliable guide to the future." Bill Gates, The Road Ahead (Viking Penguin).

"What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his own soul?" Lee Iacocca stated this in his book Straight Talk: "Here I am in the twilight years of my life, still wondering what it's all about....I can tell you this, fame and fortune is for the birds." Ravi Zacharias, Can Man Live Without God, (Word Publishers, Dallas: 1994), p. 58

Have you ever watched people fritter away their lives pursuing what the world says is important? Their spouse and children stand idly by as they chase their elusive dream and reach for the wind. The spouse dies a slow emotional death. The children look for affirmation elsewhere. All the while, the world loudly affirms the dreamer, but God says they are a failure.

St. Paul wrote in Philippians 1:16 "I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content."

I Timothy 6:6 "Now godliness with contentment is great gain."

I Timothy 6:8 "And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content."

How much is enough? If we spend our lives defining success like the world defines success, what makes us any different?

Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon toured Calcutta, India with Mother Teresa. They visited the infamous "House of Dying," where sick children are cared for in their last days. They went to the dispensary, where the poor line up by the hundreds to receive medical attention. Senator Hatfield watched Mother Teresa feed and nurse those left by others to die. When he was finally overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the suffering she and her co-workers daily faced, he asked, "How can you bear the load without being crushed by it?" Mother Teresa replied, "My dear Senator, I am not called to be successful, I am called to be faithful."

Mother Teresa said it best. "We're not called to be successful. We're called to be faithful." But still the question stands, Who determines whether or not we're successful? What determines whether or not we're successful?

Transition: Let me suggest the following. Most of us would agree that an explorer is lost without a map. A football player can't run a play unless he's thoroughly aquatinted with the playbook. An engineer is lost without his drawings. So it is with Christians. If we're to be truly successful, then we must know what God's Word says.

As a pastor I fear that many Christians have settled for being a "nice person." They figure if they're "nice" then they're a good (and successful) Christian. Being a successful involves more than that.

I want to direct your attention to the only place in the Bible the word "success" appears. It's Joshua 1:8. Listen to what God's Word says about being successful. "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."

Success is finding out what God expects and doing it.

Hebrews 10:7 "Then I said, 'Behold, I have come In the volume of the book it is written of Me To do Your will, O God.' "

John 8:49 "I honor My Father."