What Success Really Mean?

By Sunday Joseph Adenuga

There are many definitions of Success as there are many people on the face of the earth. The idea that I am trying to sell to you in this book is summarized as follows, “You too can become as successful as you ever desired.”

Success is the ability to set a goal and accomplish it in record time. The synonyms of success are achievement, accomplishment, victory, triumph, hit the target, winner, sensation, and so on. The opposite of it is failure. What one considers a success, another may see as nothing meaningful or important. For example, a man that set out to climb Mount Everest is going to consider himself a success only after climbing the highest mountain on planet earth. Failure to accomplish this feat will point out to our man that he has not succeeded yet. Though presently, he may be a millionaire, but something is lacking, a goal yet to be fulfilled, this will cause a lot of heartache until that mountain is subdued, he doesn’t see himself as a success. As long as he has not climbed the great mountain, he continues to battle, plan and re-plan so that he can eventually succeed. To me, climbing Mount Everest is nothing of value to (because my interest is in something else), but it means a lot to our man who has set a goal to conquer the greatest mountain on earth.

Success therefore is the accomplishment of a purpose (or goal) that brings fulfillment, joy and satisfaction to a man. We must remember also that what a man consider a success, another man may see as a child’s play. When I was growing up (as a youth in the secondary school), I use to consider as nun-serious those other students whose goal in life was to excel and become stars in the field of sports. Every time they went out for practice was wasted as far as I was concerned then. Little did I know that with each practice, they were getting nearer to their life’s purpose and goal; they were getting nearer to their success; they were accomplishing their life’s vision as they went out early in the morning. I remember that I always pitied them and their parents for such waste of time, now I know better.

Success is not just accumulating a lot of money (although many people consider those who are rich as successful): Many strikingly rich people actually died lonely and unfulfilled in life. Many of them have been further destroyed because of large volume of money they do not know how to manage due to lack of vision. Success brings true joy (it is not money that brings joy), I have seen many people who are not so rich who have a lot of sense of accomplishment in life. I know that a truly successful person cannot remain poor in life, but I also know that money is not the only yardstick to measure how successful any person is in this life.

Success is not a destination but an adventure that continues to get better each day as you discover more secrets of how to better achieve your set goals with ease.

Success is not luck or winning large amount of money in a lottery, neither is it a gift. Many lucky winners of such lotteries have ended up really broke and some have died most miserable and shameful death because of their inability to maintain such life of affluence that they got from winning lotteries. Friends, sudden wealth has led more people to early grave than poverty. Poverty has helped more people to be wiser and better in life than sudden wealth. In fact, sudden wealth is very dangerous and should not be sought after. Go for real success that comes out of hard work and careful planning.

Success is not an inheritance. Although some inherited wealth is enough to sustain you to a life of affluence till the day of your death. Real success builds on the inherited wealth by hard-work. You cannot afford to sit down and enjoy someone's success without any input of your own. See Proverbs 20:21.

An inheritance may be gotten hastily at the beginning; but the end thereof shall not be blessed.

When you work hard your inheritance will give you more success, and it shall be blessed at the end. Inheritance can give you wealth only God can give you true success, see also Ecclesiastes 7:11

Wisdom is good with an inheritance: by it there is profit to them that see the sun.

Success is not traveling abroad. Remember that if you travel, you have to work twice as hard as you will at home to make anything of note because you are now in a foreign land. Except the Lord specifically is calling you out to do something definite and productive in raising other people's lives in the foreign land, then the whole effort of traveling may be meaningless.
That your friend has traveled abroad doesn't make him to be more successful than you. If traveling is your goal and the thing that will add to your joy and give you a sense of fulfillment in life then go for it. The only point is this when you get there, do all you can to help as many people as you possibly can.

Success is not just becoming the leader of a group, organization or nation. Many leaders are not truly successful; we’ve had leaders like Adolf Hitler in this world that killed about two million Jews, his end was shrouded in mystery.

Success is not being born to a rich family, it is the ability to bring wealth and comfort to a hitherto poor family and help poor friends.

Success is not popularity or acceptability of an individual in the society, although true success always attracts many people; most of them are ready to idolize the successful one. Such successful people always know how to manage the praise of men without allowing it to get to their head.

Success is discovering God’s goal and purpose for your life and pursuing the same until you have accomplished it to the maximum, and make a mark in that God’s chosen purpose for your life.

Success is inside you, failure is around you. God is Success and He is in you so says the Bible, see 1John 4:4. Satan is outside you and he is author of failure, look inward and you will discover success. Success is in you, don't look elsewhere.

Success is the ability to exhaust your entire God given talents and gifts to make this world a better place than you met it. We are talking here about the real meaning of success, it is the ability to put smiles on the faces of those whose lives touch yours; it is the ability to make men (and women) better than you met them. No matter how rich you are, if you make people bitter instead of better than you met them, then with all your money, you are a big failure.

A successful life is that which leaves others with a desire to do something worthwhile with their own lives too. I assert again that success is beyond the accumulation of wealth; it is the ability to raise up many other successful men. It is the ability to produce many other millionaires. The success of Moses became established as he was able to produce a Joshua (a successor), Elijah produced an Elisha. Jesus, the greatest success that ever happened to mankind has raised us up as successful disciples of His. We are destined by His word to tread upon serpents and scorpions; we are the ones that will put the devil to shame in these last days. Jesus Christ is alive through us in this generation; we are the miracle workers; and we are called to do those things that He Himself had done when He was here on the earth. See John 14: 12

Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do: because I go to my father.

The greater work or success your successor makes, the greater your success. When your successor cannot do greater works than you, then your success is not everlasting. A success without a successor is a failure in disguise. Are you surprised at that statement? If you succeed beyond measure, and have billions of dollars, when you die, except you have a good successor, all those wealth will be squandered and wasted. If you want to know how successful Jesus was, look around you, every Christian you see is a testimony to the success of Jesus. What? Jesus who neither bought a land, nor build a house, nor own a car. He didn’t even own a donkey not to talk of owning a fast horse, yet he is the greatest man that ever lived. Why is this so? Because he has millions of successors, those who carry on His God given purpose on earth. The purpose of destroying the works of the devil in the lives of innocent people who are bound by the forces of evil. This wonderful Jesus did not get married, produced no biological children, yet have turned many sons of men to become sons of God. We are changed from ordinary mortal to supernatural beings, we are giving to have the very life of God, we are translated from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of God and now the kingdom of God is within us. What a great success Jesus is.

To be the president of U.S or Nigeria is a success, but you see that is just the beginning of the show of success. Performing your duties in such a way that many people’s lives will be better because you are president is the REAL SUCCESS that we are talking about in this article.

Magic or Miracle

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Miracle is the supernatural intervention of God in the ordinary course of life; it is beyond human calculations, predictions and manipulations. No science of any sort can explain it is God at work, it defiles logic or reasoning, it beats every human imagination.

Miracle is different from magic because magic employs the use of the mind, hallucinations and illusions, you can study and learn the art of magic. Magic follows a certain pattern of occurrence but miracle does not. Nobody can study or fully understand how a miracle happens, when it will happen and the pattern it will take. This is so because the miracle of healing one blind man may be very different from how it will occur in healing another blind man in the same venue of occurrence.

You can understand the workings of magic but nobody can understand the workings of a true miracle. This is true because God Himself alone is the One that works miracles, but magic is worked by man, it is a science and as I mentioned earlier, anyone can learn to become a magician.

Bible examples of miracles

If you read 11Kings 4: 1-7, you will learn about the story of a widow woman whose husband, the breadwinner died untimely and was heavily indebted to her husband's creditors who threatened to take away her sons, the collaterals that were used in obtaining the loans. This woman cried to the man of God, Elisha who performed the miracle of multiplication of oil. This was a miracle no science of this day can explained, it was supernatural, and you can't beat that.

Jesus attended a wedding at Cana of Galilee, the wine got finished, they needed a miracle fast, and the story is in John 2: 3-11. The miracle of all miracles happened when Jesus Christ the son of the Living God turned water into wine before their very eyes, can you beat that?

11Kings 6:25-30, 7:1, 2, 16-20. We read here the situation in Samaria when there was a very severe famine or inflation, it was difficult to survive, and people were already killing their children and eating them as food because of the severity of the lack in the entire nation. Suddenly the man of God, Elisha declared that, "by this time of tomorrow, there shall be surplus in the land, people thought that he was crazy, but it happened because God Himself was the One involved in working that miracle.

The Bible is full of occurrences of miracles, read your Bible and see God in action. I have experienced many miracles, God have used me many times to perform unimaginable miracles. God have used me, by merely asking me to speak words of authority into some situations and I have seen God work His wonders. I have seen so many barren women conceive and gave birth to children, my friend, miracles are real, they still occur. You can witness a miracle in your life too; the starting point is to give your life to the Lord Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. It is as simple as that.

Importance of miracles:

Miracles are very important to accomplish God's work in this world to convince the gainsayers and those in doubt that God is real. Some will not believe if they do not see miracles. Miracle can deliver to your hand what you may have been struggling to achieve for many years without success. Miracle is a sign that God is with us, it is very important to silence the onslaught of the devil or enemies; it keeps their mouths shut because it is a stamp of God's approval upon our lives.

How to enjoy the flow of the miraculous:

* Note that miracles happens in the atmosphere of worship, to experience miracles, you must cultivate the habit of constantly worshiping the Lord in your church and in your privacy.
* Loving the Lord with all your heart causes a wave of miracles to begin to happen in your life and ministry. Our Lord Jesus Christ said we should seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all other things shall be added to us.
* Study of the word of god with understanding in the spirit brings about the workings of miracles see John 1: 1-5, 14 the word of god is the work of God, it is the miracle of God. God commanded us to attend to His word see Proverbs 4: 20-23
* Purposeful personal prayer life creates a life full of the miraculous; prayer gives us a voice in the heavens, and gives us respect in the kingdom of darkness. Prayer produces power; a prayerful Christian is a powerful Christian.
* Faith is a very important ingredient in performing any miracle on earth, have faith in God. Faith believes the word of God, it is also working according to the word of God. Faith calls those things that are not as though they were Romans 4: 17-22. Faith says God has done it, or I have it now, or I am rich or blessed. As a matter of fact, faith sees beyond the NOW.

You Are Not Ordinary

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By Pastor Adenuga Sunday Joseph

God who created the heavens and the earth loves the earth so much that He created man in His own image to have dominion over everything that He created. He put man in charge of all created beings and things. The earth contains a lot of what we call 'Natural Resources', a lot of different species of birds, animals, insects, fish, plants, trees, land mass, seas, oceans, rivers, mountains of different sizes and heights.

God in His wisdom thinks it right to make man the king of the earth. The Bible says in Psalm 24:1 that "The earth is the Lord's, and all its fullness, the world and those who dwell therein" meaning that God owns the earth, it belongs to Him by right of possession and ownership. When something belongs to you, the right to do with it whatever you choose is exclusively yours.

God decided that man should be in charge of His (God's) earth, to manage it for Him. Man has not failed in this awesome assignment. man has turned this earth to near paradise considering the fact that man started with no house, no clothing, no roads, no cars, no telephones, no books nor ability to read. The only thing man was given was nothing but food and water in the garden of Eden, think about the wisdom God gave to man to turn this world from such empty earth to near paradise of cities like Paris, Hong- Kong, New York, Toronto, Singapore, Kuala-Lumpore, Johannesburg, London, just to mention a few beautiful cities of the world.

Man has done so well in the realm of science and technology that even God will give us pass mark, no doubt. The truth is this, God's intention was not just to have a breakthrough in science and technology but also to do exploit in the spiritual realm. We have failed generally in the area of the spirit, we have not known the Lord who loved us so much, who created us and gave us the wisdom to have dominion over all His earth. We have failed to recognize the one who has called us to head His corporation - earth.