The Spiritual Measure of Success

Jeremiah 7:27, ESV

“So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call to them, but they will not answer you.”

God called the prophet Jeremiah to be a spokesperson to the nation of Judah—and He also told Jeremiah that the people would not listen to what he spoke. 

He was called to speak, but no one would listen. And God knew it.

Wow. It was a calling of God that would produce no visible earthly fruit in the lifetime of the one who was called.

In the eyes of the world—and in the way we measure success—it would seem as if Jeremiah was a complete failure. It would seem that his work failed.

But not in God's eyes.

God’s agenda is often a mystery to us; therefore, we can’t measure our success by what we would imagine that agenda to be. We have to measure our success by whether or not we’ve been obedient to the One who has called us.

God didn’t measure Jeremiah’s success by visible earthly fruit. He didn’t measure Jeremiah’s success by the number of converts—or any other numerical data. God measured Jeremiah's success by his obedience to the call.

And He measures ours the same way.

So often, when we feel like God has called us to do something—but we don’t see immediate fruit—then we feel like we’ve failed. But God doesn’t measure our success the way we measure success. God measures our success by our obedience.

If we’ve been obedient to the call of God, then it doesn’t matter if we see the fruit of that obedience on this side of Heaven or not. We must walk in contentment knowing that our obedience renders us successful in the eyes of our Creator.

And when we can’t see the fruit of our obedience on earth, we can still trust that there is fruit. We can trust God with the seeds we sow in obedience—because our labor for the Lord is never in vain (1 Corinthians 15:58).