It is every person’s desire in life to win. Even if you’re not a competitive person, it still feels good to win. This is especially true in life. To win in life and be successful is something many people see as being worth striving for.
This striving to win and be successful will take you in two different paths though.
The first path is, if you strive and succeed, you will become proud. You may say that this isn’t you or that it wouldn’t be you, but deep inside the heart there will be pride, even when you are able to summon a bit of humility to not appear proud.
The second path is, if you strive but don’t succeed, you will be devastated. When success doesn’t come despite giving it all you got, despair will come, even when you are able to muster a bit of courage to continue to try. Eventually it will wear you down because striving and not succeeding is not sustainable. Sure, you can try to mask feeling devastated with other things, healthy or unhealthy, but it will be just that, a mask.
There is so much that hangs on this striving that seems so natural to all of us.
The good news is that the Bible offers another way. Another path.
There is a guy named Paul in the Bible.
If anyone was striving it was this guy. He strived to become the best at what he did. He set out to become a religious man and he became the best of the best early on in life. He was able to gain success at an early age. You would think because he was a religious man that he wouldn’t have become proud, but he did. The more he did to become more and more religious, the more proud he became. Until one day when everything changed.
One day he set out to continue to do more of what he thought was God’s work and Jesus appeared to him. Paul wasn’t the same after that. His name was actually Saul, but after Jesus appeared to him he became known as Paul. Curiously, the name Paul means «small», «little», and «humble». Paul became a completely changed man.
Paul said that everything he had strived for, all of his wins in life, were now considered a loss to him. He had a lot of wins in life, but he came to consider those wins in life as losses. This is what he said, «But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.» (Philippians 3:7).
Paul was no longer placing so much meaning and personal worth on whether he succeeded or not, on whether he won in life or not. He came to find a bigger purpose for his life. It was no longer a matter of winning or losing in life. He no longer engaged in striving to succeed in life.
Paul began to live like Jesus lived here on earth. As Jesus was filled by the Holy Spirit, Paul also lived not by his strength and his striving, but by the help of the Holy Spirit. In Romans chapter 8 he makes the argument of not living by the flesh, which is in one’s strength and striving, because it eventually leads to death (pride or despair). Instead, he argues to live by the (Holy) Spirit of God, which is true life and peace.
If we live by the (Holy) Spirit of God, when we have success in life we will not be proud because we will know it was not through our own strength that it was achieved. In fact, we will know we are fulfilling a bigger purpose that God has for us, for the entire world. In the same way, if we fail, we will not fall in despair because we will know that we are still loved and embraced by God, and that our personal worth and purpose in this life does not depend on our striving.
To win in life is to live by the Spirit.
Examina La Biblia 