What Does a Successful Christian Look Like?

As a pastor I am prone the comparison trap. I'm sure you're prone to the same sort of thing in your world.

For me, it's comparing my ministry to other pastors and churches. The churches are generally bigger and the pastors have a larger platform - they speak well, their biceps bulge through their sleeves, and they have a lot of followers on Instagram. For the record, I don't even have an Instagram account. #loserpastor. By every human measure they are more successful. Which isn't to say they're not successful spiritually, either. I'm sure they're far more spiritual than me. (Drat it).

It's easy to compare ourselves based on measures of success, even though we know, or at least say we know, that in God's kingdom, some measures of success aren't that helpful.

When Paul arrived in Galatia, there was something terribly wrong with him. He wrote to the Galatians, "You know that previously I preached the gospel to you because of a weakness in the flesh."

Imagine for a moment... Paul has gone to this new place to preach the gospel. Hopefully he'll be eloquent and wow his audience with good arguments. Maybe God will work great miracles like he's done elsewhere. Might he fill a stadium? Nope. He was crook, and it was through whatever that 'weakness in the flesh' was (we don't know), the Galatians heard and believed the gospel.

That's not to excuse sin or sloppiness, of course. But if our weakness means we lean into Jesus because we don't have anything in ourselves, then we're on the road to success.

Which is all to say, at least in the Christian life, don't try to be successful. Just lean into Jesus.