What Is Success? What is Expertise?
By Patrick Roberts
Success apart from the Spirit of Christ must be impossible for
me, or else I am not a Christ-follower. If I wrote and printed
10,000,000 copies of the most encouraging book of all time and
yet all of them were lost because of a political overthrow, in
which all books everywhere were burned, except for one corner of
a page from one of my millions of books, which had just enough
room for Christ's name to be printed thereon, which God caused
to flutter down and land in the right place at the right time
for the right person to see it and think on Christ, and if this
were all the work that God had in mind for me to do in His
kingdom then great! So it goes that none of our efforts are ever
in vain in Christ.
When we remember Him first and foremost, then we are successful
in God's sight. The culmination of all God's creation, including
the world and everything in it, is the summation of all things
in Christ. As for us who seek Him, our success begins with our
own surrender to Him.
We will make strides toward spiritual success to the extent that
we become invisible, resembling nothing in comparison with the
greatness of Christ. And my success in speaking to you about Him
will be proportionate to the extent that you become more
dependent on Him only and no puny man. As for us who follow
Christ, we will be most useful to the world when we are useful
to Him first. And I will be useful to you, O reader, so long as
I bring your attention to the real, living God.
If we belong to Christ, then we will be strong when we claim no
strength by ourselves, wise when we claim no knowledge except
Christ, free when we claim no liberty except His Spirit in us,
and we will live when we die to ourselves so that only He lives
through us.
There is no greater mystery, for us it is too high,
He makes Himself the Way for us to know and live and die.
Our superior freedom in Christ is a wonderful relinquishing of
this life. This means, at the end of every long day, Christ
alone holds tight to those who belong to Him. With this in mind
we can embrace the inexpressible freedom of surrendering our
right to define what success is, choosing instead to let Christ
define us and our success. We have a peace of mind trusting Him
to lead us and hold us together as we go.
Indeed, we who follow Christ are the only people in the world
who can truly set out with nothing to loose and everything to
gain because our Savior is the Rock of the Ages. He accomplishes
every impossible thing on our behalf. He frees us to obey Him.
And to obey Him is to enjoy an otherworldly freedom.
Every Christ-seeker is in the process of learning the secret to
living well, which is to let Christ be the Expert and Teacher.
What this means for you, O reader, is that Christ is the Expert,
not me.
Christ is our main Teacher, not any person, no matter how
competent that person may seem. At those rare times when I catch
a glimpse of Christ in control, I breathe a sigh of relief for
His church's sake. Incidentally, long before I acknowledged this
fact, He had already been holding His church and everything else
together all by Himself.
I'm also relieved to be falling back on Christ as the deciding
Factor of my own life-race. Because He makes Himself my All in
all, I can catch a lifelong second wind and run the rest of this
race unhindered by my own scrawny input.
We who seek Christ should be encouraged by this knowledge, that
the impossible things are possible for Him. It is His exclusive
business to bring the dead back to life and to fix the things
that seem broken beyond repair. You might say, we have freedom
in Christ to go all-out with the distinct possibility of failing
miserably. But, then again, utter failure is impossible in
Christ. Such is the fullness of His Divinity that victory is
irresistible for those who follow Him, and all this to His
credit.
Christ will work out His kingdom on this earth, no matter how
much I am tempted to place my clumsy self at the center of His
otherwise well-balanced, grand scheme. He will chip away at
what's left of me determinedly, even despite myself, making me
into the best man that any man could ever hope to be, which is a
big nobody, a nothing. He is compelling me by His miraculous
power to prefer invisibility, so that He alone might be visible
through me. I do not know if I am yet ready to take a bullet for
Christ, but in the event that He does require this, I'm sure
He'll make me able.
More of Him, less of me
Let this be our strategy
More of Him, less of us
He will be for us enough
How slavery to Christ is the best kind of freedom is mysterious,
but even this mysteriousness is purposeful. My flesh is in no
way sure, but my soul knows Him very well.
Though I dare not claim to have arrived at any great expertise,
yet I do claim this one thing, that I am seeking the One who can
show me everything at the time I need to know it. And to this
end I write, to point you, the reader, toward that One as well.
Though I have not arrived at perfection, yet I am a good example
to the extent that I desire perfect obedience in Christ's name.
For this reason, because I am seeking, I figure that anyone else
who has a mind to seek God might also benefit from my thinking
out loud, on paper. Only remember that the words written here
were meant to be tested in the real world, just as Jesus Christ
is Lord of the real world.
Patrick is an average Christ-seeker. His goal is to turn people
to Jesus Christ.
Find additional resources at
www.BooksByPatrick.com and www.KoGmedia.com
