Success and Self-Control
Our Mission
To present Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord to business and professional men and to develop Christian business and professional men to carry out the Great Commission.
Leviticus 22.31-32 demands, you must be sure to do My commandments. I am the LORD. You must not profane my holy name, and I will be sanctified in the midst of the Israelites. I am the LORD who sanctifies you. Sanctification is a twenty-five cent word that means to make holy. It means to make us like God. It means to restore us to our true nature, the original intent of the Master Who made us.
The Bible’s story of humanity begins with male and female being made in the image of God. This is why humans are of more value than the animals. This is why murder, including abortion, is so wrong; an image bearer of God is being forcibly removed from this earth. It is why we are commanded to love one another as God has loved us.
We are children of God, descendants from one man and one woman who were formed by God and commanded to multiply. The key to returning to our original nature is to obey God.
Obedience to God is the means for becoming like God which is the will of God for all the people in the world. In order to obey God we must know what God requires. What we think is good isn’t necessarily what God has prescribed as good. We like to guess at what is good and pat ourselves on the back as being good without going to the source where good is defined, described and demonstrated.
Obedience to God can only be done by the power of God resident in the children of God through the Spirit of God. If the Spirit of God is not in a person, their works are not considered good by God and profit them nothing. Unless we are in God through a relationship with the Son of God we can do nothing of significance for God. This reality isn’t something we like but is God’s perspective as clearly spoken by God Himself when He lived among us as one of us in Jesus the Savior.
It really doesn’t matter what we think for we will not persuade God to deviate from His will when we meet Him face to face. He will enforce His will and hold us accountable for ignoring His directives which He graciously provided us through the Bible while we lived on this earth.
Our chief good is to obey God. His commands are not burdensome because He is humble and gentle but they are required of us if we plan to live with God forever in heaven and upon the new earth. Obedience is not an option because becoming like Jesus is not an option for the children of God since the Father is forming each one into the image of His Firstborn Son.
We either obey and participate or go our own way and pretend God doesn’t really care. Whose thinking are you betting your eternity upon? Your own or God’s as He defined it in the Bible?
His Opportunities
- Michigan Prayer Breakfast May 18th at the Lansing Center. CBMC has a table. Tickets are $30 each. Breakfast is 7.30-9am. Email if you would like to attend. Norm Miller, Chairman of Interstate Battery will be the speaker.
- Next CBMC Special Luncheon is June 8th. Eagle Eye GC. Brig Sorber, Executive Chairman of Two Men & A Truck International will be our speaker.
- CBMC needs your help to continue its ministry to men in the marketplace. Please support CBMC today. DONATE
MONDAY MANNA
A service to the business community
A Publication of CBMC International
April 24, 2017
Success and Self-Control
by Robert J. Tamasy
“At no time is self-control more difficult than in times of success.” I do not know the originator of this unattributed quote, but it seems to carry a lot of wisdom. Success has an annoying habit of feeding egos, puffing up those who succeed with pride and overconfidence.
We can see this every day in the news – entertainers, professional athletes and other celebrities strutting about proudly, basking in the adulation they receive and reveling in media spotlight that shines on them. Few things have the effect of bloating one’s self-image more than success.
This phenomenon manifests itself in the marketplace as well. Sales executives closing important sales in rapid succession and then finding great difficulty containing their egos. A person receives a promotion, and suddenly becomes tempted to regard himself as more important than he was before. Someone else receives a prestigious award and before long she proceeds to “lord it over” her peers and colleagues.
This is hardly new; it is a problem that has spanned the ages. More than 150 years ago, then U.S. President Abraham Lincoln observed, “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” In his view, strength of character is revealed not in the brutish exercise of authority, but in one’s ability to retain a sense of humility in the wake of success.
Many centuries earlier, the apostle Paul wrote about this to Christians in ancient Rome, admonishing, “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment” (Romans 12:3). In other words, we should strive to keep our successes and personal victories in proper perspective.
Even before Paul made that observation, Jesus Christ taught about the virtues of genuine humility. He said, “For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Matthew 23:12).
And thousands of years before Abraham Lincoln offered his thoughts about how power and status can test character, the writer in the Old Testament book of Proverbs made a similar observation. “The crucible for silver and the furnace for gold, but man is tested by the praise he receives” (Proverbs 27:21). As Lincoln noted, while we tend to perceive adversity and hardship as severe tests, how we respond when things are going very well can be just as revealing.
How then should we respond when success comes our way, whatever that endeavor might be? We all want to succeed in our work, as well as in our personal lives. But that does not warrant practically breaking our arms patting ourselves on the back. If we refuse to let success go to our heads, we may well find commendation coming from other sources: “Let another praise you, and not your own mouth; someone else, and not your own lips” (Proverbs 27:2).
Another passage instructs that focusing on God, who provides us with the opportunities, talents and resources to succeed, is the best approach: “Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful” (Joshua 1:8).
© 2017. Robert J. Tamasy has written Business at Its Best: Timeless Wisdom from Proverbs for Today’s Workplace; Tufting Legacies; coauthored with David A. Stoddard, The Heart of Mentoring, and edited numerous other books. His website is www.bobtamasy-readywriterink.com, and his biweekly blog is: www.bobtamasy.blogspot.com.
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