No one sets out to be a failure.
No one wakes up each morning thinking “Man, I can’t wait to see how I’m going to completely screw up everything in my life today!”
What we want is to be effective. Successful. We want to win at life, whether that’s in our relationships, at home, at work, or even when it comes to things we do for fun.
If you’re a follower of Jesus, you probably want to feel like your winning in your walk with Jesus. You want to be making progress. You want to change and become more like Christ.
Unfortunately, what we want is often the opposite of what we get.
- Winning at home seems like a pipe dream. You can’t get home early. The kids drive you crazy. And you simply don’t have the energy to engage with your spouse.
- Truly great friendships seems impossible. You have a hard time connecting with people anyway- of finding people with similar interests. And, after all, friendships take time and you just don’t have that.
- Being really close with Jesus feel unattainable. You have a hard time understanding the Bible, and life is so busy that putting in the time to read and understand it doesn’t seem reasonable
In short, it feels like everything is set against us gaining the thing that we wish we want. And I get it.
Life is tough. Life is busy. Life is exhausting. We never have enough energy. We never have enough time. People always act like…well, people, and it drives us up the wall. There are things that are hard to understand and it seems like a waste of time to try.
But here’s the cold, hard reality that we have to understand:
Life is always going to be difficult, and the deck will always feel stacked against you.
If you’re waiting for everything to magically line up tonight and thinking that tomorrow things will just fall into place and life will finally be like you wish it was, you are going to be very disappointed in the morning. The simple fact is that life will never automatically be the way we wish it was.
There will never be enough time. We will never have enough energy. People will always act like people. We won’t understand everything.
Those facts are baked into the cake, so to speak. Which means this:
Winning at life has nothing to do with what life is like.
Being a winner at life- and not a failure- has nothing to do with the circumstances of your life. If it did, we wouldn’t constantly hear of Hollywood stars struggling with depression, eating disorders, failed relationships, and even suicide.
Winning at life has nothing to do with my life is like.
But it has everything to do with what- or rather WHO- I’m looking at.
Proverbs 11:25 (NIV) says this:
“…whoever refreshes others will be refreshed.”
Isn’t that interesting?
It doesn’t say that life will be awesome if our kids were better behaved, our spouse were more loving, our boss were more understanding, or we could understand everything about the Bible and time with Jesus was easy.
Instead…it says that when we refresh others, we will be refreshed.
If that is true, then the reverse is true as well: when all we are focused on is our own “winning” at life, the result will inevitably be losing.
Why is that true?
Because when the focus is my success, then what happens is I act according to my own self-interest. I act selfishly. I act with only myself in mind. I do what makes me feel good, and if it doesn’t make me feel good, I don’t do it.
Hopefully you can see how that attitude is going to wreck a home, a job place, and even your relationship with Jesus.
A life that’s all about me will ruin me because I will live selfishly.
And selfish people always push other people- and, more than that, their Savior- away.
On the other hand…
If I approach my home, work, or relationship with Jesus with a different attitude- one that is no longer focused on myself- then that changes the game completely. Specifically, if I stop focusing on my life being awesome and focus on making the lives of those around me awesome, it turns out that I win in the process.
Why? Because- biblically- it is better to give than to receive. And those who give, while they certainly bless others, are the ones who reap the greatest blessings at the end of the day. It turns out that…
Helping others win at life is how I win at life.
It’s completely counter-intuitive. It doesn’t make sense on paper. But, according to Scripture, it’s exactly the way things work.
By the way, that’ll also lead you to winning in your relationship with Jesus- because Jesus was a servant (Mark 10:45). He came to serve- not be served.
When we help others win, we start to look like Him in the process. That’s winning in your walk with Christ!
But not only that- having the mindset of a servant will also radically change my time with Jesus in His Word. It no longer becomes about “What I can get out of it.” It becomes about “What I put into it.” It’s no longer about Jesus bringing something to me. It’s about me bringing myself to Jesus and simply giving myself to Him- just like He gave Himself for me.
That’s a much healthier relationship dynamic. And in my experience, every time I approach Jesus with the attitude that I simply want to be with Him and not necessarily “get something out of it”, He never fails to meet me through His Word.
If we want to win at life and our relationship with Jesus, it’s no longer about what we get. It’s about what- and how- we give.
When we refresh others- THAT is how we become refreshed.