I grew up playing baseball, basketball and football. I still play all three sports in the "old man" leagues. As I grew up playing competitive sports I was trained to perform in order to receive recognition and reward. After all, the best players earned the playing time. And when I received recognition and reward based on my performance, it sent a very strong message that, "I was successful!" As a result, I developed a real appetite for performance based success. I craved it. Still do.
Even though I was never the best athlete, I was good in all the sports I played. Good enough to earn a starting position as shooting guard on my varsity basketball team, pitcher in baseball and quarterback in football. I even played one year of basketball at a collegiate level and had dreams, all be it delusional, to make it to the NBA and be crowned with my ultimate reward for performance.
After college I carried this same competitive attitude into the marketplace. This is where reward and recognition really became fun because I have been rewarded with titles and money. The shorter the title, the more money you make. And if you can get a title with acronyms in it, then you have really been successful and really make a lot of money! And that's what it's all about right?
This is what we're told the American dream is all about. In fact one company I worked for I heard the founder and President say in a speech to all the employees, "I am the American dream and if I can do it, anybody can do it!" to which the majority of people cheered, including myself, embarrassing as it is to admit. He had started this company 40 years prior and had built it to an almost $1billion empire. He had reached the ultimate success based on his performance, so I had to cheer. He was right!
He was right because that is the economy that we're raised in. You have to earn everything you get in life, climb to the top, don't care how many people you step on in the process, outperform your competitor or counterpart, look out for yourself because nobody else is going to look out for you, protect what it is yours, your freedom, your rights, your independence. It's the American way! God blessed us! Unfortunately the President of this company died a few years later of cancer and was never able to really enjoy his success. Sad.
So is performance based success the true measure of success? Based on the majority of what we see and live in our culture the answer is yes. Those that don't perform don't experience success, they experience defeat. In the words of Ricky Bobby's daddy, "If you don't finish first, you finish last!" We're trained from infants to perform to receive approval, reward, recognition and for some...love. It's a self damaging cycle to allow ourselves to be sucked into. The danger that I've seen, and experienced, with this type of performance based success is that we get our identity wrapped up in "what" we do. If we don't perform and succeed, then we don't, get approval and therefore we don't feel good about ourselves. Why? Because we have been trained to feel that way!
So how do we break this vicious cycle of performance based success? How do we give up our identity in what we do and allow God to give us an identity in who we are? How do I become content with simply being "O.K. in Jesus." Here is what God is doing in me. He is deconstructing my world, my beliefs; in myself, in Him, in His church, in my faith and re-defining these things based on a new set of learnings. He is centering each point of my life over his definitions of truth and away from the false representation of truth I have learned.
As I give up my economy of success based on how I perform and how others validate me, God is replacing it with His economy that is indexed to obedience - biblical obedience. A whole new set of currency is being established in my life. I don't have to win every disagreement with my wife. I don't have to receive recognition for an idea that I had at work as I watch someone else take the praise. I don't have to live my life guarded because my equity leverage on others is knowledge. I realize that my incentive in life is no longer recognition and reward based on my performance, but rather my incentive is biblical obedience based on my response to the love that Jesus Christ showed to me.
God is requiring me to let go of my funny money and live in His economy. Is it hard? Yes. I don't like to "lose" in the game of life. But I am also getting tired of playing the game so the rules have to change. I am surrendering all my accounts to God and asking him to give me new ones. I choose to no longer participate in my economic environment! But rather, I choose to index my economy to Biblical Obedience through the life that Jesus has called me to live! What does that look like? let's talk.
