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.

The God Factor In Success

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

By Sunday Joseph Adenuga

God is a God of success. If you read the Bible from Genesis 1: 1-2, you will see the success of God from the very beginning.

In the beginning GOD created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, let there be light: and there was light.

In the beginning, when God created the heaven and the earth, three things happened: number one, the earth became formless; number two, the earth became void; and number three, darkness covered the earth. It was a period of confusion, but God was not confused, neither was He disturbed: He only spoke and success followed. A good look at the universe will convince you that God is a big success. Yes, He is a super success. No matter from which perspective you look and consider what success really is, God is really the biggest success. He is rich, and everything is in super abundance in the universe. Lets consider the riches of God in this our universe; as we do this you will observe with awe His wisdom, power and orderliness.

This earth contains about seven continents; they are Africa, America, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, and South America. Each of these continents is a very large mass of land containing different types of living and non-living things, many countries and nations are in these continents. Apart from Antarctica (which is another mystery on earth), all other continents house millions of people of different ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds. Apart from these, there are many islands that stands alone and do not belong to any continent. Many rivers, seas and oceans surround the earth, mountains, vegetations, and a lot of natural resources are hidden in the depth of the earth. All these were created by the Almighty God and belong to God. Psalm 24: 1. The resources on earth cannot be fully comprehended; they are beyond the comprehension of any single human being no matter how brilliant he may be. Beyond the earth, we have the moon; the moon orbits the earth and revolves round it. Few people have traveled to the moon, the discovery of those men reveals that the moon is not habitable by any living being and besides the gravity of earth is different from that of the moon.

Now our earth and moon belongs to a solar system, this consist of the sun and nine planets, this earth is just one of them. There are some planets in this solar system that are far bigger than the earth in as much as one thousand times. Some planets have about eighteen moons orbiting them; and you know what? None of these planets can support any type of life apart from our planet, earth. Scientists have sent space probes to many of these planets and found out that the conditions in all these planets cannot support plant or animal life. Water does not exist in liquid form in many of these planets; some are extremely hot while some are extremely cold. The earth is the only planet found to be conducive to support plant and animal life. Another interesting thing I want you to know is the existence of asteroid belt. Containing many asteroids. Our solar system is very big; the size of it is beyond human imagination. Now when I first learnt of this I was dumbfounded, what is it? That the sun of our solar system is just a star, it belongs to a galaxy of stars called the ‘milky way’. This galaxy have about one hundred billion stars and our sun is just one of them. Do you know that this our sun even though it is a million times bigger than the earth, it is not considered as one of the big stars in the milky way galaxy. Another thing is that some of those stars may also have their own solar systems with planets orbiting them. Scientists even claimed that some stars have been discovered to have one or two planets orbiting them and that many other stars may have more than nine planets in their solar systems.

Are you following me with understanding? This is God’s creation, how big, how vast? That is not all; the Milky Way is not the only galaxy of stars in the universe, there are about one hundred billion observable galaxy of stars, and each of these galaxies also have about one hundred billion stars. WOW! Can you do the mathematics? Find out in one minute the number of stars there is in the universe, (that’s just a joke anyway). The truth is that God’s creation is so vast, so rich, there is an abundance of all things, and you can’t know everything God has created. The Bible says in Ecclesiastes 8: 17

Then I beheld all the work of God, that a man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun: because though a man labor to seek it out, yet he shall not find it; yea further; though a wise man think to know it, yet shall he not be able to find it.

The above passage is referring to the work of God under the sun, which means this earth where we live. He is not even talking about the universe; this earth is too small when we consider the whole universe, yet no man can understand all of God’s works on this earth. The Bible also talking about God’s work says in Job5: 9
“which doeth great things and unsearchable; marvelous things without number.

Yes, nobody can number all his works; you can’t count and number all the fish we have in the rivers, seas and oceans; you can’t count and number all the houseflies in all this earth; neither can you count and number all the stars in the universe. Can you see how awesome and amazing God’s work and creation is? Nobody can imagine in totality the wealth and the riches of God. Assuming we have one hundred billion galaxies of stars and each galaxy contains one hundred billion stars, how many stars do we have altogether? The answer is one hundred billion times one hundred billion that equal a number represented by 1022. Do you know the name of that number? Please send the information to me if you know it.
Friend, do you want good success? God is the Maker and Giver of success. God gives whomsoever He loves, and the good news is that He loves you. God is a God of order and details, the God who abhors waste.

Why did He create so many uncountable stars? Of what use are they? You and I may not know but there are reasons. I love God, I respect His wisdom. If you want real and lasting success, the best place to look is unto God, look unto Him and you will never be disappointed.

Failure Is Not Final

By Sunday Joseph Adenuga

The Choice is yours
Let’s see what the bible says in Deuteronomy 30:15,19
“See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil; …
I call heaven and earth to record third day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; THEREFORE CHOOSE LIFE, that both thou and thy seed may live”
One of the keys to success on planet earth is to believe very strongly the title of this book, that is, God is not partial. From the above passage of scripture, we gather that God has set before every man and woman two things; they are on one hand life, good and blessing, on the other hand, death, evil and cursing. God will not choose for you, neither will He decide for me, nor act for me the best He could do is what He had done and that is His counsel. God said, you have a choice between success and failure, but I advise you, choose success. In every department of life, we are faced with the very same decision, we are the decision makers of our destinies, we determine what we will have and the level we will be in life, even to the point of how long we will live. This does not mean that you wake up and decide that I will live for as long as ninety years, no, the decisions are made everyday, the food you eat, how you use your body etc. are your daily decisions that ultimately affects how long you will live on earth.

The decision to be rich is also reflected in your daily decisions, sleeping twelve hours a day certainly will bring you poverty, decision not to work hard, the decision not to safe and to spend all your money are made daily and these goes to affect how wealthy or poor you will ever be on the surface of the earth. One of the best points of our humanity is the free gift of choice. Not even the Almighty God can dare change the decision you make in life. So, you see, God is not partial.

Please understand this, you are where you are today because of the cumulative decisions you have made in the past. You see, I married my wife; God did not force me to. Thank God, we are blessed with children. If I had decided to marry someone else, and we had children, those children would be different from my present children because in that case my gene will be combining with another woman’s, producing a different result entirely. My decision to marry Bisi Shodeinde has brought about a whole new and different destiny for both of us. If I had married another woman, my destiny could not have been what it is now; it might be better or worse.

Do you understand what I am saying? I was called to the full time ministry; I decided for it, God did not force me to do it. You see; if I had decided not to go into the ministry, my destiny would be different from what it is now.
Let me make it clearer, in the year 1984, I got admission to study Mathematics Education in the University of Lagos: four years later I became a trained mathematics teacher. On the other hand if I had decided to read law and entered for law in 1984, I would have graduated as a lawyer and my whole life and destiny could have charted another course, I would have become another person. Becoming a lawyer would give me different approach to life and certainly today, who I would have been only God knows.

Your decisions make you or mar you. Stop blaming God for your misfortune, but blame your self. God is not partial; God loves you as well as He loves any mortal being no matter how great that human maybe. Say it out loud; “God loves me”.
So you see my dear reader, the choice is yours. The ball is in your court; the destiny of the ball (in the court) depends entirely on you.

You Have Power of Choice

You have a part to play in actualizing the plan of God for your life. It is the will of God for you to prosper and be in heath III John 2. The bible says that God is not willing that anybody should perish but that all should come to repentance II Pet. 3:9. From this passage of scripture, we gather that it is not the will of God for anybody to perish. But it is very certain that people are perishing in sin, it follows that the will of God is not been carried out. God’s will is that all should be saved and that nobody should perish, but that is evidently not happening?
Why is God’s will not fulfilled? It is because people are given the power of choice here on earth and both God and the devil respects the decision of human beings. If God’s will is for you to be greatly blessed and physically powerful and you decide otherwise, God cannot and will not enforce His will on you. On the other hand, if you are bound by poverty and ill health, and you get hold on the word of God, and you decide with all your heart to part with poverty and sickness, you will win. That is the way God design for man to live on earth, by the power of our heartfelt decision.

If you are born in a poverty-stricken environment and you decide to call it quit with poverty, so be it, you are out of poverty zone. Your strong determination takes you out of that dreadful zone of lack and never enough.

What’s on Your Mind?

Fix it now in your mind, how you want to live, the type of house you desire to live in, the type of car you want to cruise in, the caliber of people you want to move with, the type of dress you desire, the type and quality of food you want on your table. All these must be decided and settled in your mind, it must be with a mindset that is ready to do anything good and legal to achieve your aim. This decision becomes your goal; it becomes an obsession, a driving force that represents your very essence of being. Someone who has decided that he would be one of the very best doctors in his country cannot live like everybody, your decision will spell out the type of life you are expected to live on earth. Can you imagine a student who strongly desires to pass out of the secondary school with excellent result playing and wasting time like all other students? You cannot live like others if you must achieve your aim in life. Can you see now that God is not partial? He wants you to succeed but He will not force you. Have you ever seen somebody that everybody considers a failure? He comes on strongly, springing surprises here and there, beating the imagination of all and sundry and coming up to become a star in the family? You too can pull the tricks. May the Lord help you to be all that He has destined you to be in Jesus name?

Failure is Never Final

Failure needs not be final; in fact, failure is success under construction. That you failed in an attempt does not mean you will never make it. God is a loving and impartial God, anybody who persists in what he or she is doing will always get a strong backing from heaven. All over the bible, we read the stories of men who failed in their initial attempt but came back strongly to become highly successful. Failure in any endeavor adds to the experience of life, it adds to wisdom and if properly managed increases your confidence.

You should never be afraid of failure, believe it with all your heart that you cannot fail and will never fail. Even if you do, it is a mistake and as somebody said, “it is not bad to make a mistake, but it is too bad to repeat the same mistake”. If you fail, try another method and continue until you succeed. You have what it takes to succeed, give it and your success will appear for all to see.

You Are Not Ordinary

Image via Wikipedia

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.