Who doesn’t want to be successful? Everyone I know spends a lot of time and money in the effort of high achievement. Success is a good thing, but it also has a sinister side.
The sinister side of success is not about what success creates or achieves, (those noble things that we couldn’t live without) but what it does to the one who has finally won it. Success has a way of lowering us into a false sense of security so that we become complacent at best and at worst, develop an attitude of entitlement.
How many people are laying on the sidelines, victims of a broken life or career because all they think about is achieving a certain simple, quick success, that after achieving it they became complacent or developed an attitude of entitlement, that people owe them something; that just because I am in the corner office today, I should have it the rest of my life. It’s like “king of the hill,” you get up, and once you’re up you stay up by virtue of the fact that you got up in the first place.
Beware of the sinister side of success as it relates to anything: in your marriage, your relationship with your children, your career, and your connection with your colleagues. No one wants to be around a person who’s smug and secure in his or her own abilities. If you want to be around people and continue to grow and stretch, understand that success can make you complacent and lazy, bitter and angry; assuming that other people are to bow down to you and respect you based on what you’ve done in the past.
As far as that goes, t<font color=”#00ff00″>he Scriptures clearly teach us that a relationship with God through Jesus Christ is not about a conversion moment somewhere when we were children. It’s not going down in front at the end of a revival or on Saturday night after a Vacation Bible School. You can only be assured you have a relationship with God on the basis of what’s going on right now. Past success, past closeness with God doesn’t guarantee the future. We get up each and every day and we achieve a success that endures and prevails.
Be careful of your successes. They may come at the beginning of your downfall, especially if you allow complacency and entitlement to creep into your heart and attitude.