Faithful Witness

Jesus defines success for us. He does not redefine success, he defines it. When we say that Jesus redefines something, we are defaulting to a man centered world rather than a God centered world. God defines things; we are the ones who redefine them and we usually do so very poorly. Jesus defines success as faithful participation in reproducing his Kingdom inside churches and communities. We live in a winner take all world. According to this value system, the one with the biggest pile wins and everybody else loses. In the Kingdom of God, the one with the most is not automatically the most successful in the eyes of the King. Why? Because Jesus taught us that all of our personal assets, the totality of who we are and what we can do, and the opportunity to enjoy and reproduce those assets are a gift from God, so bragging about who has the most converts or the biggest church or who has sold the most books is not only vain but nonsensical. Even worse, it is the value system of the w

Success is important to us Americans isn’t it? It captures our minds and beats in our hearts. Success is the context of our culture; it is the essence of being and doing American. If a person is known to be successful, he or she strides through life with that unique American swagger. If the opposite is apparently true, we enviously limp along behind the swaggering crowd in bitterness and sadness. Obviously, we believe in our right to pursue success, and we will nearly kill ourselves to become successful. We may even insist that the ones we love make significant sacrifices for us as we pursue our success. I mean, who wants to sadly limp through the mall? Malls are built with the American swagger in mind. So are mega churches. Jesus does not think like this. Jesus teaches us that faithfulness is the measure of success and participation is the measure of faithfulness. In the part of the Bible written by the disciple of Jesus named Matthew, Jesus teaches us about life from his