Surviving Success

God has been good to Kari and I in our ministry. Although we've had some extremely difficult times - in one place inparticular - God has blessed us by allowing to see some significant fruit in a few different situations. But, we haven't had to fail a whole lot in ministry yet. And when we have, we've been surrounded by people who love us and have been able to help us rebound fairly quickly. God has been good to us.

As a result, I've never really worried about failure in ministry. Part of it is probably youthful naivete, and part of it is a belief in a big God. Maybe it's because I've never really sought out ministry opportunities; nearly every ministry opportunity I've had has been the result of something "falling in my lap." So, I've got a pretty real sense that God is involved in ministry with me, and can help me rebound from failure. I don't worry a whole lot about surviving failure.

I do worry a whole lot about surviving success. And I worry the same things for several of my friends in ministry.

In my limited experience, it's a lot easier to survive failure than to survive success. When you're failing, you have to trust in God. You don't have anything else. Nobody is asking you write books, or speak at their conferences. Nobody wants your advice or your help. In fact, people try pretty hard to distance themselves from you because nobody wants to be around a failure.

But when you're seeing success, the temptation is always there to trust yourself - your talent, your resources, your skill, your intellect, and your abilities. When we're successful it's easy to forget that the only reason we're successful to begin with is the grace of God. So, we get proud, possessive, and protective of "our" ministry - afraid deep down that someone is going to recognize that we don't have a clue what the heck we're doing sometimes. And we end up sabatoging the work God is doing because we take it over for ourselves.

Yeah, it's a lot easier to survive failure than success.