Success: How Do We Define it?

(Katie) In the last 24 hours, I celebrated 3 months of marriage, got all of my mid-term papers back from graduate school, and received my 90 day evaluation for my job at Wheaton College. We are constantly measuring ourselves (I am constantly praying that I am growing in my ability to love James and reflect God's love for Him) or being measured by professors, bosses, friends (etc). If you consider yourself a "recovering performance addict" like me, its a constant battle to not let our identity be determined by our performance. Unfortunately, striving for a spirit of excellence in all that we do can be a slippery slope because we constantly get the "A's" from professors and do well on our performance evaluations, making it even easier to believe the lie that I am what I DO.


I've been praying into this two-year season of my life at Wheaton College, asking the Lord specifically what He desires to do in my life, what He desires me to be focused on. In the midst of praying into this, James and I had dinner with our small group over at our pastor's house. Jonathan and Amy asked each of us to share at dinner what the one thing is that we get fired up about when God speaks to us about it? For me, that topic is Belovedness. I am passionate about people knowing who they are in God. Why? Because its been the greatest struggle of my life. My prayer for myself for the next two years is simple: Lord, make me rock solid in knowing that I am loved by You and a lover of You. This is what we are to derive are primary identity from. How we look to other people, our gifts, skills, our physical appearance---all of it is secondary. I am in the process of completely redefining my definition of success to focus on whether I am believing that I am loved by God and am a lover of God. I want to derive my value in how God feels about me and how I am responding to the Lord. 


I was reminded of how counter-cultural God's view of success is when I read the story about Mary encountering Jesus, anointing Him with her alabaster flask of ointment. Jesus tells the disciples that her sins were many, yet she was forgiven because SHE LOVED MUCH. How do you define success? Where do you derive your sense of purpose and value from? Beloved, I pray that we can be a generation of laid down lovers, compelled by love. I am grateful for the family and friends that God has surrounded me with who are more committed to me knowing that I am God's beloved and that every area of my life is a RESPONSE to Him, my first love.