Dealing with success

Oh my word! The messages in this book are so rich that we are making slow progress and may never get to the end by the end of January!

Verses 6 and 7 of Deuteronomy 8 are interesting. They say what we’ve heard before – but the other way round. Not ‘Obey my commands and then I will give you good things’ but ‘I have given you good things THEREFORE obey my commands’. God deserves the obedience of the Israelites because of what he has done for them. This little section is all about their response to God’s goodness.

When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you.  Deuteronomy 8:10

Praise. Be thankful. Count your blessings. Develop an attitude of gratitude.

God knows how easy it will be for the people to forget him once they have plenty. He also knows how easy it will be for them to become proud and say ‘Look at us! Look at all we have achieved!’ without giving God the glory.

You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today.  Deuteronomy 8:17-18

And the consequences for forgetting God are severe –

If you ever forget the Lord your God and follow other gods and worship and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will surely be destroyed. Like the nations the Lord destroyed before you, so you will be destroyed for not obeying the Lord your God.  Deuteronomy 8:19-20

The message here is clear.

When we are successful, we must never lose sight of the one who gave us our talents in the first place. We must not become proud. We must humbly thank God for all that he has blessed us with.

So how do we react to praise?

Many Christians are so scared of appearing proud that they think it’s right to put themselves down all the time. They underplay their successes. They always find something negative to say when someone says something positive about them. Nothing they do is ever good enough.

This extends to their family too. They are so worried that their children will become big-headed that they are very measured in their praise – ‘Well done, but imagine how well you would have done if you had tried that little bit harder’ or ‘yes, that’s a good score, but next time, maybe you could aim to be top of the class rather than second’. They tease their children to keep them humble. They undermine any aspirations that they believe are unrealistic. They would never tell their children that they are proud of them.

I do not agree. I’ve lived with that and I know how debilitating it can be.

I have aimed to find what I consider to be a better balance, although sometimes I think I give the impression that I am too good at receiving praise and am far too full of myself (it’s kind of a backlash reaction to not wanting to undermine my achievements). Deep down though, I do feel I am pretty good at remembering God and where all that I am and have comes from. I genuinely know from experience that I can do nothing without Him who gives me strength. Maybe I am just not good enough at voicing that aloud.

Take my job, for example. I am the Community Life Colleague at Asda Living Gateshead and I do a good job. People tell me all the time. My manager tells anyone who will listen what a good job I am doing. Being affirmed like that is great. And I actually agree. I am very proud of what I have achieved in the last year (although also realistically aware of what I have not. There has been plenty that has not gone right along the way and I have plenty of lessons still to learn). But the praise I receive is definitely NOT the reason I do this job. I love my job. I remember sitting at the Community Conference in Leeds last January and hearing all the amazing stories and thinking ‘I am so lucky. I have the best possible job in Asda in the best possible store’. And a year on, I still feel that way. I feel so grateful to God for this job and the opportunities it gives me and the people that I meet through it. Yes, I only earn slightly more than minimum wage. Yes, I have no career prospects. Yes, working long and unsociable hours around Christmas sucks. But boy is it rewarding!

And I do thank God for this job and so many good things in my life that are here because he gave me the health and strength and love and grace and resources to enjoy them.

Deuteronomy 9 follows on in the same vein.

The Israelites are about to cross over into the Promised Land. They are about to dispossess a strong and tall people – the Anakites. Well, let’s get that right. God id about to dispossess a strong and tall people – the Anakites –

He will destroy them; he will subdue them before you.  Deuteronomy 9:3

Because without God, no way would they have made it this far. No way could they defeat stronger and more experienced armies.

In verses 4-6, God says the same thing three times. Don’t ever think that it’s because of your righteousness that you have achieved all this. No, your success is down to me, not you. This is all part of a bigger plan to cleanse the earth from wickedness and make you a flagship nation to shine as an example of how to live in relationship with me. (OK, some poetic licence there, but read it for yourself and I think you’ll see that this paraphrase is pretty accurate).

Moses goes on to remind the people of where forgetting God has got them in the past. The consequences of their rebellion. The golden calf. The grumblings. The reactions to the reports from the Promised Land.

God was ready to destroy them all on several occasions. They are lucky to be there at all.

And all because –

You did not trust him or obey him.  Deuteronomy 9:23

And there we have it again.

Trust and obey.

Because there’s no other way.