Tag: <span>success</span>

Some precious friends struggle with failure. Paul, God’s apostle to the Gentiles, learned it — His secret? Contentment. Together with godlikeness, Paul found a sufficiency in God’s grace. He had solved the mystery — to be humbled or to be exalted; to be hungry or to be well fattened. No matter the accompanying, conditioning, determining event, Paul discovered an alternate solar system, with new definitions for success or failure. Frankly, in this configuration, both abasing and abounding are absorbed into the all-defining substance — grace!  See Philippians 4:11-12, 1Timothy 6:6, 2 Corinthians 9:8. How could Paul do that? He could manage it because he was filled with God’s Word of grace. In that indoctrination of the Eternal dimension, Paul learned to see harrowing happenings, planned shindigs, random competitions or happiness-determining encounters — all God-initiated, all God-allowed. Why? Because they comprise the tools of God’s forming work as Potter with Clay.…