It Took Me 10+ Years to Learn This About Success — I’ll Teach You in 15 Minutes

Success by the Book podcast is the place where Christians who want to experience the extravagant goodness of God in all areas of their lives come for mentorship. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Success by the Book Podcast, the place where Christians who want to experience the extravagant goodness of God in all areas of their lives come from mentorship. I am your host, Dr. Una, and I'll be unpacking the secrets I have learned from the Word of God over the last two decades. Let's dive in. Is it possible to be super wealthy, raise a great family, be healthy, and still not be successful? Um, the answer is yes, and we are gonna talk about that because I want you to have things in proper perspective and I want you to be very clear what it means to be successful for all times. Now, I will say here that we're gonna talk about a lot that it's not gonna have anything to do with wealth, but I want to be very, very clear that God is not against us having wealth. In fact, if you look at the scriptures and you look person after person, you look at Abraham, you look at, you know, Jacob, you look at Isaac, you look at David, you look at Job, you look at all of these people. These are all people who were made rich by God. Okay, so I, you know, my husband will put it this way: don't hear what I'm not saying, okay? But I want us to look at this, right? So I spent a good part of my life growing up in Nigeria, and I will tell you like, if if you're in Nigeria, um, the measure of wealth financially would be the Naira. That's the currency that's used in Nigeria. And you would use, you would gather that to um, you know, pay for your home, pay for your kids' tuition, pay for whatever it is that you need to pay. But if you made a decision that in 60 days, I'm gonna be relocating, I'm gonna be moving from Nigeria to the United States where I'm going to stay for the rest of my life. Like let's say you made that decision, then you will gather the Naira, but you're very conscious of gathering the Naira and converting it to dollars because where you are going, Naira does not matter. You cannot use it, you cannot spend it, it is not any more valuable than paper that's been written on, right? Okay. Let's look at another picture. Um, let's say that you were a student and um you, you know, your family scraped everything they had to send you to college, and there are so many things you can do in college. Um, you could be um part of certain organizations, um, you could attend birthday parties, you can make sure you have the coolest outfits to wear, you could, you know, do anything you want, but at the end of the day, the idea is the real reason you're here is to study, is to get an education, and to leave with a certificate or diploma or a degree of some kind. And so you're always clear on what the main thing is, and the goal is to keep the main thing the main thing. Okay. Now, when we think about our time here on earth, our time here on earth, there's so many things we can do. We can grow up, we could get degrees, we could build businesses, we could raise a family, we can do all of those things, and all of those things are important. But what I want to show us this, you know, this moment is what is most important? What is the actual reason why we're here? What are we gonna be measured on? Now we're gonna be measured on a lot of things, but this is this is the main thing. So let's read a few scriptures here, and then we can all come to a conclusion, okay? So the first one we're gonna read is gonna be Revelations chapter 14, 13. Okay. Revelations 14, 13. I'm reading from the New Living Translation. It says, and I heard a voice from heaven saying, Write this down. Blessed are those who die in the Lord from now on. Yes, says the Spirit, they are blessed indeed, for they will rest from their hard work. They will rest from their hard work, for their good deeds follow them. Okay? Now, I could drive the coolest cars, and there's nothing wrong with driving the coolest cars, and if cars are your thing, God says, Delight yourself in me, I will grant you the desires of your heart. So there's nothing wrong with that. But it the cars don't follow us, right? The cars don't follow us, the degrees don't follow us, the money doesn't follow us. What follows us would be our good deeds. Okay. And so there is this thought process of, okay, while I'm on here on earth, there's so many things I can be doing, but when I go over there, there are only few things that will still count. So am I living a life where I'm gathering Naira, quote unquote, and I'm not converting it to dollars, even though I'm moving to the United States. Do you see what I'm saying? Like we have to think like, what will matter where I'm going? Okay. So that's the that's the first scripture I wanted us to read. Like, we want to put our time here in perspective. It doesn't end here. Okay. Now the second scripture I want to read is the scripture, Jesus said this. And it's just it's a scripture that the first time I saw it, I was like, wow, how amazing that somebody can say that. But I was like, it's Jesus. So I don't think I could ever say that. And then I found out that somebody else said it. And I was like, wait a minute. If Jesus was our example and he could say this, and this other person who is not Jesus, he's a human, like I am, if he could say a version of that, then that means I have access to it. Okay. All right, so let's read this scripture. I'm gonna read it from the message translation, just because I mean, it's so beautiful how it's put in in the message translation. So this is John uh 17, verse 4, message translation. This was Jesus right before he was crucified praying. And he said, I glorified you on earth. So he's talking to the Father, I glorified you on earth by completing down to the last detail what you assigned me to do. Wait a minute. I glorified you on the earth. How did I do that? By completing to the last detail what you assigned me to do. And when I think about that, I'm like, wait a minute. What if I could pray that prayer? What if at the end of my life I could say, Lord, while I lived on earth, the hundred years you gave me, um, I glorified you. And I glorified you by completing to the last detail what you assigned me to go to do. So I said, when, you know, when I initially when I heard that, I was like, well, clearly he's not, I don't, Jesus can do that because he's Jesus, he's practically God. And then Paul says, I fought the good fight of faith. I have finished my race. What? Like, I have finished, I'm done. In fact, there's a there's a uh a verse where he said, This is what he said. He said, you know, I'm kind of torn between two things. I'm paraphrasing here. I'm kind of torn between two things. You know, whether I should stay or if I should go, if I stay, if I go, it's amazing. I'll go be with Christ. But if I stay, it'll be more profitable for you because I can stay and teach you more. I'm like, someone has completed his assignment. He's just like, do I want extra credit or not? Like, or do I just want to go stay with Jesus? And so that made me go like, if Jesus could say that, and Paul could say that, then I bet it's something that I can strive for. I can strive to live this life where I spend it in discovering who God called me to be. I spend it in doing what I know to do based on the scriptures because there's the general calling of believers, and there's a specific, you know, specific calling to an individual, but I can I I may not know everything, but I there are things that I do know. And then I can do it long enough and intentionally enough. And yes, I'll have other things, I have so many other things to do with my life, but I always keep the main thing, the main thing, and maybe at the end of my life I can say, Lord, I glorified you on the earth by completing to the last detail what you assigned me to do. And then I'll hear him say the most amazing words ever. Well done. Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Now the question then becomes How do I do that? How do I how do I do that? And I want to give you something to to think about because this is something everybody has access to. Everybody. One of the things that the kingdom really needs is intercession. And if you look at the ministry of Jesus, for instance, there were people who spent decades in the temple praying for his coming and praying for his ministry. One of them was Anna, the prophetess, the other was Simeon, and they prayed and birthed what God would do. There, there are scriptures where God is like, man, there was a whole mess here. And I was looking for a man who would stand in the gap. I was looking for a man who would pray. I couldn't find anybody. And so if you're wondering, what could I do? You can intercede. You can pray for your pastor, you can pray for the people who are unsaved in your world, you can pray, you know, when you see events where the word of God is being preached, like large crusades and stuff like that, you could pray for that. When you see believers struggling, you can pray for them. When you see people in a backslidden state, you can pray for them to be restored, you can pray. Everybody has the opportunity to be an intercessor. What's another thing you can do? You can be the reason why people get to know more about God. That could be teaching them. Um, maybe you're a minister, that could be preaching to them. Um, maybe you're an author, that maybe that could be documenting what God says. Maybe you're a small group leader, maybe you can be one. And you know, and you might say, I can't do any of those. I'm super shy, I'm this, I don't even know what I know. Let me tell you something. Um, I learned this. You can be like the woman of Samaria. She she didn't preach anything, she was just like, I saw a man, I met a man, come meet him. And the Bible says that they came from streaming from all the villages to come and meet Jesus. Did she really preach? No. But she told them, Come and see. You can do that. You can take someone with you to church, you can take somebody with you to Bible study, you can share this podcast with somebody, you can live this life where every day your life is doing something to move the kingdom of God forward. Right? And so if you do that, you're still part of the discipleship, even though maybe you're not teaching. And you keep doing and you keep learning, and you get to the place where you can teach as well, right? So there's discipleship, there's intercession, and there's giving. Okay, so people say uh there's a there's a lot of what people call controversy. If there's anything in the Bible that the Bible says that God is clear about, I don't accept it as a controversy because I'm a believer. I believe the Bible. It's not a controversial, it's not controversial for me. Okay, it may be controversial for anybody else. All right, so when it comes to giving, there's a lot of drama around it. Like all these pastors want is your money, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But this is the deal the gospel is free. Salvation is free. Salvation is free because somebody paid for it, Jesus paid for it with his life. Nothing's really free, but it's free for you because somebody else paid for it. Okay. So salvation is free, the gospel is free. But the mechanism of delivery of the gospel is not free, right? It costs a lot to run the kingdom of God. Okay, so when you think about it, whether that's churches, they have to have buildings, whether that is events, they don't go there and say, hey, we're a church, and they give it to them for free. Um, whether those are the Bibles, for instance, you may pull up your phone and you can download the U version Bible app and it's free, and it's reading, it's reading the Bible to you. You're able to highlight it and do all of those things, and you're like, Yeah, it's free. It's free because people have spent millions of dollars, millions and millions and millions of dollars paying for it so it can be free for you. And so one of the things you can do is you can decide I'm gonna be an investor, I'm gonna be someone who gives, I'm gonna be part of the people who would use wealth to promote the kingdom of God, to get the gospel into as many hands as possible, to support people, to host events, to do all of that. And so there are people who would intercede, there are people who be part of discipleship, there are people who would give. I do all three. And I try to grow in my capacity to do all three every single year, right? Because this is one life, and oh my goodness, I want to show up before God and I want to be able to say I completed the last detail. Now, that's the general. And as you start following him, he'll show you more things, right? There are things he showed me. The the daily prayer call that that I host every day. He says, He's the one who said, I want you to do this, and so we did that. And this podcast, I want you to do this, and we did that. And, you know, like some of the businesses that I own, he's like, I want you to do this, I want you to to help this group of people, and I did that. And so he'll show you specific things, but don't wait. So I want to invite you, right? When God talks about prosperity, when the Bible talks about prosperity, it's an all-round thing, it's an all-encompassing thing, right? And I want to invite you to embrace all of it, okay? So I want you to be healthy, I want you to be wealthy, I want you to have a deep walk with God. I want you to, your family to do real. I want all of that, but I also want you to keep the main thing, the main thing. I also want you to constantly have eternity on your mind. Like after we're done here, then what? And that time is so much longer than this time. So this time is given to us as a gift to prepare us for that time. I want to invite you to really lean in and really think about it. As humans, we're smart enough to have retirement plans for the short time we are in retirement, but in eternity, that is forever. And so we want to make sure that we cross over to that side the way we want to cross over. Okay, so I would love nothing more for you to have a great life here and have a great life in eternity. I would want nothing more than for you to be able to say to God, Lord, I glorified you on the earth. I lived a life that brought you glory by completing to the last detail what you assigned me to do. Okay, just get chills thinking about it. But I would love for that to be my testimony. I would love for that to be your testimony, and then we will hear him say to us, Well done, thou good and faithful servant. So go start applying these things today. Join the army, the army that prays, the army that disciples, the army that gives, and let's go on this journey so we can hear our master say those words to us when it's all said and done. All right. So thank you for listening. Go share this. That's part of it. That's part of the discipleship. And I'll see you on the next episode.