What Do You Think Success Is?

06 Dec What Do You Think Success Is?

What is success?

I have always been fascinated by dogsled racing. I’m not sure why. I think it has something to do with the stark do-or-die, winner-take-all circumstances and the almost mystical bond that develops between a musher (dogsled racer) and his dogs. So it was with unusual interest that I read about author Gary Paulsen, a Minnesotan who, having never run a dogsled race and having put in only 150 training miles with his dog team in the familiar Minnesota woods, ran the 1,200-mile Iditarod dogsled race from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska, in the dead of winter.

In a fit of naivete bordering on insanity brought on after some amateur sledding one day, Paulsen decided to enter the race on a course that, he would later learn, would nearly kill him several times. He immediately started his team on endurance training, and the first day turned out to be a microcosm of his entire sledding career. Had he known that, I feel sure he would have quit right then. When all the dogs were hitched to the sled, he went to the rig, stood by it, waved to his wife who was watching by the door of the house, and jerked the rope holding the sled to a tree. The dogs bolted.

I don’t think the rig hit the ground more than twice all the way across the yard. My [word], I thought, they’ve learned how to fly. With me hanging out the back like a tattered flag, we came to the end of the driveway, where we would have to turn onto the road.

The dogs made the turn fine. The rig started to turn as well, but I had forgotten to lean into the corner, and it rolled over. We set off along the road with the rig upside down, and me dragging in the gravel on my face.

It took me four miles to get the rig up on its wheels, by which time the handlebar was broken off and I had nothing to hang on to but the steering ropes. I was also nearly completely denuded, my clothes having been tom into shreds during the dragging.

We did the thirty-mile [training run] in just under two and a half hours, and never once was I in anything like even partial control of the situation.

In subsequent outings I left the yard on my face, my rear, my back, my belly. One day I left the yard with wooden matches in my pocket that ignited while I was being dragged as I passed the door of the house. It gave me the semblance of a meteorite, screaming something about my pants being on fire—while Ruth laughed so hard she couldn’t stand up. (from Winterdance, by Gary Paulsen, pp. 299-301)

Paulsen never gave up, though. He ran the two-week-long Iditarod race and finished. An astonishing feat. The training runs were a stroll in the park by comparison. When he crossed the finish line, a reporter asked him if he had anything to say. He said, “I’m coming back next year and winning.” He did go back the next year. But he didn’t win. He wisely retired and lived as a writer in New Mexico.

He never won the race he said he would win. Was he a failure because he didn’t win? Or was he a success simply because he did his best? What is success? Can you fail at the task and still succeed? And for the Christian, how does God view success? Can we fail at the task and still succeed in God’s eyes? Is it enough just to finish the course, or must we win?

Americans are preoccupied with success.

Americans, preoccupied with success, often interpret it as being number one. Athletes shove their faces into the lenses of side-line cameras, hold up their index finger, and shout “We’re number one!” Is that success?

Each year, Fortune magazine publishes the Fortune 400, a list of the 400 richest individuals in the United States. Is that success? My alma mater sends out a regular mailing listing the achievements of its graduates, and there are many stories of her children having done well. Is that success?

Is it possible for everyone to succeed? How can we know when we have succeeded? For Americans in the 21st century, does success satisfy?

Success doesn’t satisfy

Unfortunately, with the modern American definition of success, it often doesn’t satisfy because after we have gotten what we want, we want something more. Someone has said, “we climb the ladder of success only to find it is leaning against the wrong wall. Proverbs 27:20 says that the “eyes of man are never satisfied.” The world’s success is a carrot on a stick. When you take a step toward it, it moves. So you have to decide whether or not you are going to be the donkey.

I remember when I first went to college not far from my small hometown, my vision for my life after I graduated from college was to move back to my hometown, live in some newly built apartments, and teach high school English. When I got a few years into college, I then wanted to go on to graduate school and return to teach college, living in some apartments near campus. But then, I waned a doctoral degree to be able to teach in seminary.

Then my life changed course, and I went into the pastorate of a brand-new church, totally satisfied if it never grew. I just wanted to be faithful to the people God brought to us. But before long I became discouraged with the lack of growth. Later I pastored a large church that experienced meteoric growth, but even that didn’t satisfy. I am a slow learner, but it finally dawned even on me that the finish line kept moving. The sad thing was I was the one who moved it.

Needing to be a success is a deadly trap, and Satan will use it to discourage us, defeat us, and even destroy us if we let him. We must let go of the need to succeed. It isn’t necessarily wrong to desire success if it is for right reasons, and it isn’t wrong to work hard to achieve it. But when we need it, we’re in trouble.

Conclusion

What does success look like for you? Have you noticed your “finish line” moving? Are you the one moving it? Do you need success?

Next week, we’ll look at what God thinks success is. I look forward to seeing you then.

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