19/12/2021
: “Thou shalt have GOOD SUCCESS” means we must shun corruption
__"Integrity is doing the right thing even when no one is watching"
Sometimes you watch a sports person or team win, but you know that something was not quite right about how they got there. Fairness, fair play, transparent rules… without this, what is sport?
Bad success, GOOD success. Many of you who are familiar with the story of the biblical Joshua, will remember this verse: “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.” [Joshua 1:8]
One day I was meditating on this popular verse, and I noticed something: Why did God call it “good” success”? Why not just “success”?
My meditation led me to understand “success” in this way: There are people out there who are successful but in a “bad” way; they might have a lot of money, or status, or influence, and yet be totally ungodly.
Wealth amassed through corruption? “Bad success”!
Then there are people who are very successful, and yet will never go out of their way to help anyone outside themselves. How would God [Himself] describe such success?
It’s just that: “success”.
But the success God wanted for Joshua was “good” success!
It is more than money, or fame, or power. This type of success is harder to get to!
“I would rather fail believing God was with me, than succeed knowing that He was not...”
If you engage in corruption, pay bribes, do deals with your kinsmen [people who do you favors because you are a member of an ethnic group whilst others are denied access]: You know that God is not in it with you, even if you pray 5 or 10 times a day, give 20% to your church and they call you “Apostle of the marketplace”!
I want to have “good” success; what about you?
Image credit: Ubuntu Hope.
