What are the odds that someone can be very successful, and yet mangage to walk humbly with his God? Well, the odds are pretty thin, say most, but what we neglect to notice is that the odds are not exactly great for those who are unsuccessful either.
Among believers, we have a deep suspicion that success means automatic compromise. If someone rockets to the top, we wonder, “who sinned? this man or his parents that this has happened to him?”
And of course, we have no shortage of examples of failed successes to point to. But our problem is that we don’t point to the failed failures. There are a lot of those also. It does not profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul, but neither does it profit him to lose the world and his soul along with it.
In God’s calculus, success and failure are determined by His holy standards, which do not include money or fame. They are not included in either direction, and whichever way the money and fame are flowing, the temptations will correspond to that situation. So, whether well fed or hungry, do justice, love mercy, and walk with humility.