We have as many definitions of success as there are people. What is success for us may mean failure for someone else. What an inspired gift we would give our children if we fully explained to them that God’s view of success is so different from ours. Here are some examples of success gone wrong:

In 1923, a group of the world’s most successful financiers met at the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago.

Collectively, these tycoons controlled more wealth than was in the US Treasury, and for years newspapers and magazines had been publishing their success stories and urging the nation’s youth to follow their lead.

Let’s see what happened to them.

(1) CHARLES SCHWAB, the president of the largest independent steel company, lived on borrowed money for the last five years of his life and died penniless.

(2) ARTHUR CUTTEN, the greatest wheat speculator, died insolvent abroad.

(3) RICHARD WHITNEY, president of the New York Stock Exchange, was released some time ago from Sing Sing.

(4) ALBERT FALL, a member of the president’s cabinet, was pardoned from prison so he could die at home.

(5) JESSE LIVERMORE, the biggest bear on Wall Street, committed suicide.

(6) LEON FRASER, president of the Bank for International Settlements, committed suicide.

(7) IVAR KRUEGER, the head of the world’s largest monopoly, committed suicide.

All these men had learned how to make money, but none had learned how to live.

The following are compelling comments from notable people who provide insight into success and what it really means:

“It was his firm and unalterable conviction that for a man who has wrapped his will in the will of God, consciously placed his life in the stream of divine Life, freed his soul from all personal ambitions, entrusted his life as a divine gift — that for such a man there is a supreme Providence that guards and guides him in every incident of his life, from the greatest to the smallest. pains, and even the final disaster itself, are simply God’s way of teaching us lessons that we could never learn again, that circumstances do not matter, they are nothing, but that the response of the spirit that finds them is everything, that it does not matter. There is no situation in human life, however apparently adverse, nor any human relationship, however apparently unpleasant, that cannot become, if God is in the heart, a thing of perfect joy; that, for To reach this ultimate perfection, one must accept all experience and learn to love all people… that the value of life should not be measured by its results in achievement or, but only by the motives of the heart and the efforts of one’s own Will”. (George Seaver, The Faith of Edward Wilson.)

“Over the last year or so, I have come to appreciate the ‘worldliness’ of Christianity as never before. The Christian is not a ‘homo religious’ but a man, pure and simple, just as Jesus became a man… He is only by living completely in this world does one learn to believe, one must abandon all attempts to make something of oneself, be it a saint, a converted sinner, an ecclesiastic, just or unjust, sick or healthy… This is what I mean by worldliness: take life easy, with all its duties and problems, its successes and failures, its experiences and helplessness… How can success make us arrogant or failure lead us astray, when we participate in the sufferings of God living in this world? ” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Documents from Prison.)

“Slowly, throughout the universe, that temple of God is being built. Wherever, in any world, a soul, by voluntary obedience, catches the fire of the likeness of God, stands on the growing walls, a living stone. When in your hard struggle, in your tiresome work, or in your terrible temptation, you grasp the purpose of your being and give yourself to God, and thus give him the opportunity to give himself to you, your life, living stone. She stands up and places herself on that growing wall. Wherever souls are being tested and matured, in any ordinary and simple place, there God is carving the pillars of his temple. Oh, if the stone could have some vision of the temple from which it is forever to be parted, what patience must fill him as he feels the blows of the hammer, and know that success for him is simply allowing himself to be forged into the shape the Master wants. “. (Phillips Brooks, The Law of Growth.)

“We have forgotten the merciful hand that has preserved us in peace and multiplied, enriched and strengthened us, and have imagined in vain in the deceit of our hearts that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of ours. Intoxicated with unbroken success , we have become too self-sufficient to feel the need to redeem and preserve Grace, too proud to pray to the God who made us.” (Abraham Lincoln.)

“There is a great disaster when a person allows a certain success to become a stopping point rather than a way station to a larger goal. It often happens that early success is a greater moral hazard than early failure.” (Halford E. Luccock.)

And for those who have achieved it:

“The naturalist John Burroughs said that when a hawk is attacked by ravens or tyrants, as is occasionally the case, it does not make a counterattack, but circles higher and higher, until its stinking tormentors no longer feel safe to follow and finally leave it. at peace. Many of us might well benefit from his example. How often does the good man or the successful man find himself the object of pestilential attacks by little souls, perhaps not sympathetic to his ideals or envious! of your success! You cannot retaliate in the same way without putting yourself down. There is only one thing to do: ascend to those higher altitudes of patience, tolerance, and self-control that can always be achieved with God’s help.” (Anonymous.)

In other words, let us rise higher, to nobler causes, for God and not for others.