Suffering From Success

There he was, sun-scorched and wilting under an oppressive maleficent east wind – just like the tree he’d been sheltering under a few hours ago.

A few hundred meters to his west, was the site of a most impressive accomplishment of his: an entire city of a 100k plus inhabitants had responded to his call for surrender to God.

Yet, our man was at his limits and was ready to check out from the land of the living.

Our man – Prophet Jonah – had just done something phenomenal. He’d achieved something many modern evangelists can only dream about – and he did it in only three days! Jonah had just had great success as far as his ministry was concerned.

Why was he then frustrated? Why was he then more suicidal at the end of this mission than he’d been when he was in the literal belly of the beast?

Some time ago, there was a question posed by a netizen which gained quite a lot of traction in the Nigerian social media space. It was a question essentially along the lines of “why are the ungodly so successful?”

This question is not a novel one. In fact, the Psalmist(s) raised this question multiple times. Apparently, a good number of Christians act like they’re okay but deep down, they really want to know why godly people don’t seem to be as successful as ungodly people.

I think the story of Jonah is quite the underrated example of how different God’s definition of success is from man’s definition. Jonah was a prophet from Israel. The city God was moving him to preach to was Nineveh, the capital city of one of Israel’s greatest ‘opps’; Assyria.

Success, as far as Jonah was concerned, would have been Nineveh scorning God’s warning and falling under the judgment of God. But the opposite happened: the people of Nineveh repented and avoided judgment. Thus, God regarded Jonah’s ministry to Nineveh as a success.

The metric by which God measures success is vastly different from what your average Joe would regard as successful. Maturing as a Christian is realizing that God’s expectations over us as believers differs markedly from the world’s definition of success.

“Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord… I don’t mean to say I have already reached perfection… but I focus on this one thing… I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.”

(Philippians 3:8, 12, 14. NLT [Paraphrased])

The desire of God is to have all men reconciled to Him and to have His will done on Earth as it is in Heaven. Every believer has that one thing they’re meant to contribute to seeing God’s kingdom established; “one thing” not in the sense of one act, but purpose.

Success, as far as God is concerned, is devotion to this purpose and “laying hold” of the very reason why God saved you. Failing to understand this would result in a whole lot of frustration, just like our man, Jonah.