Chasing Success Daily Scripture Reading Plan This guide is designed to help you walk through an intentional process over the next three weeks of defining success biblically and identifying steps of faith you can take to align your life with this definition of success. Each day has a passage of Scripture to read and meditate on, a few thoughts to help you process the passage, specifics to pray for and a couple of questions to help you think through how to practically move toward Christ. Each week has five days of reading so you have some flexibility if you miss a day. We are praying for you as you walk through this journey over the next three weeks. We encourage you to talk with other guys about what you are reading and some of your answers to the questions. Week One Defining Success: March 5 10 Day One But everything that was a gain to me, I have considered to be a loss because of Christ. More than that, I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Because of Him I have suffered the loss of all things and consider them filth, so that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but one that is through faith in Christ the righteousness from God based on faith. My goal is to know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, assuming that I will somehow reach the resurrection from among the dead (Philippians 3:7 11). Look at how Paul just defined success. He said there is nothing more valuable than knowing Christ. He goes on to say that not only is there nothing more valuable, but everything else is a loss; it s trash compared to knowing Christ. Really think about what he just said. Financial success, becoming highly influential, family success, being well-liked; everything you can think of is considered a loss compared to knowing Christ. So is he saying we throw everything else out? Not at all. He is saying that knowing Christ is so far ahead of everything that nothing else can compare. So when it comes to chasing success you should run to Christ and then allow everything else to be filtered through that purpose. Success in every arena is determined then by the way you pursue knowing Christ. Success at home, at work and in your neighborhood is not measured by simply giving the most effort. Success is measured in how you know Christ and allow that relationship to influence every other area of your life. 1. As you look at the way you have been living your life, what would you say has been your definition of success? 1
2. Can you say you honestly agree with Paul in this passage that knowing Christ is where you find success? Why/why not? 3. If knowing Christ is truly the purpose you wake up for every day, how would that change the way you spend your time? Your family? Your job? Friendships? The way you spend your money? Your neighborhood? Use the passage as a guide to pray for the Lord to lead you to a place where knowing Christ is the most valuable goal of your life. Ask the Lord to show you how to align your definition of success with His. Day Two And one of them, an expert in the law, asked a question to test Him: Teacher, which command in the law is the greatest? He said to him, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command (Matthew 22:35 38). For am I now trying to win the favor of people, or God? Or am I striving to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a slave of Christ (Galatians 1:10). The most important command in the Bible is to love God with all our heart, soul and mind. Of all the commands in the Bible, this one is the most important. Why? Because every other command is built off this one. If we don t love God, then we won t obey the rest of the commands He s given. This means the thoughts that go through our minds, the emotions we feel, the things we desire should all reflect a love of God. We all know, at times, we have thoughts that stray and emotions that do not match what the Bible says is right and true. The reality is that we cannot love God with all our heart, soul and mind without the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. But because of the Holy Spirit, we are daily being refined and molded by the Lord. So seeking to love Him with all that we are is to be our primary concern. But this focus can easily be thrown off track by a desire to gain the approval of other people. We want to be liked or valued for what we bring to the table. We want others to see us as successful. These verses point to the reality that loving God with everything we have produces much more success than chasing the approval of other people. 2
1. What does it look like to love the Lord with all your heart? All your soul? All your mind? 2. What is currently competing with loving the Lord with all your heart? All your mind? All your soul? 3. Where are you chasing the approval of other people instead of the Lord? How can you move toward seeking the Lord and not the approval of others? Ask the Lord to reveal the places in your life that keep you from loving the Lord with all your heart, soul and mind. Admit the ways you seek the approval of others instead of the Lord. Pray for the Lord to renew in you a love for Him with your heart, soul and mind. Day Three The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands (Matthew 22:39 40). Do not owe anyone anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments: Do not commit adultery; do not murder; do not steal; do not covet; and whatever other commandment all are summed up by this: Love your neighbor as yourself (Romans 13:8 9). We looked at the greatest commandment yesterday and the rest of the passage in Matthew 22 tells of the second greatest command which is to love your neighbor as yourself. If our primary focus is to love God then as we love God we learn to love what He loves. The Bible speaks to His unparalleled love for people. His love for people runs so deep that He sacrificed His Son so people could have an opportunity at a restored relationship with Him. If God loves people with such a deep love, then it naturally follows that we should learn to love people the way He does. The more we love Him, the more we love people. So we have the opportunity to look at success through the lens of loving God and loving people. 3
1. What does it look like for you to daily love the people around you? 2. Think about your schedule for the day and the people you will come in contact with today. What are specific ways you can love the people you will see today? 3. Use the following question to think about your day and reevaluate at the end of the day. How successful was your day if the measure of success for today is how you loved God and loved people? Pray for the people you will see today and ask the Lord to help you love them the way that He does. Ask the Lord to show you how to see people through His eyes. Day Four Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come. Everything is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed the message of reconciliation to us. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, certain that God is appealing through us. We plead on Christ s behalf, Be reconciled to God. He made the One who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:17 21). As men we like to have a clear task to accomplish. There is something satisfying about having a job to do and getting it done. The Lord created us to desire purpose and to seek to fulfill it. This passage points to our task of being ambassadors of Christ so others can know who Christ is. He s given us a message to carry and that message is one of reconciliation. Our task is to be a representative of Christ to others. 4
The reality is, when people know we are believers in Jesus Christ, we represent Christ with all our actions. So when we get angry and have an outburst at our kids, that is a representation of Christ to our kids. When we long for what we do not have, that is a representation that Christ is not enough. These are inaccurate representations, but others will see us as believers and put those characteristics onto Christ. An ambassador is always representing the person they serve. So as you go to work today, remember, you are an ambassador of Christ in every moment. When you come home, you are still an ambassador of Christ. When the kids are in bed, you are still an ambassador of Christ. As we love God and love people we embrace the task God has given and find fulfilment in representing Christ to every person we encounter. 1. How would your lifec hange if you really saw yourself as an ambassador of Christ? 2. What is the message of reconciliation? When was the last time you shared this message? 3. How can you keep this reality that you are an ambassador of Christ at all times at the forefront of your mind? Thank the Lord for giving us such a noble task that we get to be His ambassadors. Ask Him to help you be mindful of this great task and to show you how fulfilling it really is. Day Five Then Jesus came near and said to them, All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age (Matthew 28:18 20). 5
In the evening of that first day of the week, the disciples were gathered together with the doors locked because of their fear of the Jews. Then Jesus came, stood among them, and said to them, Peace to you! Having said this, He showed them His hands and His side. So the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, Peace to you! As the Father has sent Me, I also send you (John 20:19 21). Think back through this week. There is nothing more successful than knowing Christ and everyone has the opportunity to know Christ. We are called to love God and love people and in turn as we do these, we become accurate ambassadors of Christ wherever we go. The passages today point to the purpose we have to make disciples. In John 20, Jesus tells the disciples that He is sending them the same way the Father sent Him. There is an intentional sending for the purpose of making disciples. Notice how in John 20, the disciples were gathered in fear and yet Jesus appearance was invigorating and everything changed from that point forward. They became bold ambassadors of Christ seeking to make disciples. We have this same purpose. As we love God and love people, we in turn help others do the same. This phrase, help others do the same is making disciples. We help others learn who God is and how to love Him. We help others learn how to love people the way God loves them. It is in doing these things we find true success. 1. What does it look like to make disciples? 2. Who is in your life that needs to hear about Jesus? 3. After walking through this week, define success. Pray for people, by name, who do not know Jesus. Ask the Lord to give you an opportunity to share Christ with them. Reflect back on the week and ask the Lord to show you how to live your life in a way that matches with how He defines success and not by the world s definition. 6
Week Two Aligning Our Priorities: March 11 17 Day Six So if you have been raised with the Messiah, seek what is above, where the Messiah is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on what is above, not on what is on the earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with the Messiah in God. When the Messiah, who is your life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory. Therefore, put to death what belongs to your worldly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desire, and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, God s wrath comes on the disobedient, and you once walked in these things when you were living in them. But now you must also put away all the following: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and filthy language from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self. You are being renewed in knowledge according to the image of your Creator. In Christ there is not Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all (Colossians 3:1 11). Last week we walked through the priorities of God for our lives to determine what true success really looks like. This week we want to ask how we practically do these things. How do we learn to love God? What does it look like to really love people? If you look at the verses for today you ll see a priority of setting a clear focus. Have you ever had a project you spent hours on at work, but the focus was never really made clear? So you did what you thought was best only to discover what your boss really wanted was something totally different. We can play a religious game believing we have the right focus only to find out we spent more time focusing on us and what religious activities we did instead of focusing on Christ and what He has done. Look at the verses to see how a focus on Christ brings clarity. When we focus on Christ we are focused on what is of eternal value and not on temporal value. This paves the way to get rid of the sins the passage points out because these sins are focused on a temporary fix to an eternal problem. The first practical step we can take is to seek to set our focus on Christ every day. 1. What are two things you can do today to help keep your focus on Christ? 2. What does it look like to set your mind on things above? 7
3. How can you combat the temptations of this world? Ask the Lord to show you how to keep an eternal perspective and a focus on Christ in the midst of a world full of temporary temptations. Day Seven Although we could have been a burden as Christ s apostles, instead we were gentle among you, as a nursing mother nurtures her own children. We cared so much for you that we were pleased to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own lives, because you had become dear to us (1 Thessalonians 2:7 8). Making disciples seems intimidating and difficult to many people. How in the world do we go about making disciples? In reality it is much easier than we make it out to be. In this passage, Paul points out that they shared the gospel, but they also shared their own lives with the Thessalonian people. Making disciples is really all about sharing our lives with other people as we love God and love people. It is an intentional invitation into our world to meet Jesus and see how He s changed our lives and inviting them to allow the Lord to change theirs. So as you set your priorities, one of the most important is to make space for people. We can structure our priorities in such a way that we are too busy to share our lives with anybody. So if making disciples is a priority, then structuring our lives so we have space to share our lives with people is a necessary step. 1. What would it look like for you to create opportunities to share the gospel and your life with other people? 2. What is one step you can take today that will help prioritize sharing the gospel and sharing your life with others? 8
3. Who are the people you are currently sharing your life with and investing in? Spend time asking the Lord to show you who you should be sharing the gospel and your life with. Ask Him to lead you to seeing opportunities to share the gospel and your life with other people. Day Eight Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her to make her holy, cleansing her with the washing of water by the word. He did this to present the church to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy and blameless. In the same way, husbands are to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hates his own flesh but provides and cares for it, just as Christ does for the church, since we are members of His body. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This mystery is profound, but I am talking about Christ and the church. To sum up, each one of you is to love his wife as himself, and the wife is to respect her husband (Ephesians 5:25 33). We cannot talk about a focus on loving people without spotlighting the way we love our wives. This relationship is to be a picture of the way Jesus loves the church. There is no more caring and intimate relationship than this one. So we must be investing in it in such a way that reflects its priority as a picture of Christ s love. The love of Christ is sacrificial and our love to our wives is to mirror this sacrifice. Spend some time coming up with ways you can love and serve your wife. We can easily give away our best time to work, kids or ourselves leaving very little quality time for our wives. Come up with three different ways you can give her quality time. Plan a date to occur within the next two weeks. Plan a time to give her an opportunity to go do something she enjoys apart from kids and plan times to read the Bible and pray together. Investing in our wives in such a way that the gospel is represented as accurately as possible is one of the most important roles we have as husbands. 1. What are some ways your wife receives love? (i.e., she likes gifts or she likes to play board games or go on hikes or for me to do the dishes) 9
2. In what ways are you currently having difficulty loving your wife well? 3. How have you seen Christ love you sacrificially and how does that affect the way you love your wife? Pray for your wife s relationship with Jesus. Spend time thanking the Lord for specific aspects of your wife s character that you appreciate. Ask the Lord to help you love your wife the way Christ loves the church. Day Nine Sons are indeed a heritage from the Lord, children, a reward (Psalm 127:3). Fathers do not exasperate your children, so they won t become discouraged (Colossians 3:21). If we are to be about making disciples, the best place to start is right at home. Have you ever seen your kid mimic a bad behavior of yours? It is in that moment you realize you are making disciples and didn t even realize it. The truth is, we are making disciples because our kids will follow our example. Even when our kids are older, they are still watching to see what we do. Learn to make disciples at home and see how the Lord will use you in the lives of your kids. The difficulty is that many of us didn t have good examples of a dad who took his role of disciple-maker seriously. So how do we learn ways to disciple our kids? Learn from older men. If you are younger, find an older man who has been where you are. If you are older, find a younger guy who is where you were and invest in helping him. He will be incredibly grateful for you! If you don t have kids of your own or your kids are grown and moved away, invest in others around you and share the gospel and before long you will be a spiritual father and have someone who is watching what you do. Dads are not always the best at sharing with their kids. If you have never shared your story of coming to know Christ with your kids, take the time to share it with them this week. Make time to pray with your family and see how the Lord will begin to work in all of your lives. 10
1. What is one specific way you can point your kids toward Christ today? 2. What other dads are you learning from? Who would be a dad you want to learn from? Be intentional and contact this guy today and ask if he would be willing to sit down with you and talk about being a father and how he discipled his kids. 3. What would it look like to be intentional and disciple your kids? Come up with three things you can do to be intentional about discipling your kids. Pray for the salvation of your kids if they have not trusted in Christ. Ask the Lord to lead you to being a father from whom your kids can learn to follow Christ. Admit where you are scared and feel like a failure as a dad and trust the Lord that He loves your kids more than you do. Ask the Lord to show you other men who have walked the road before you that you can learn from and for the courage to approach them and ask for help. Day 10 Do nothing out of rivalry or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves. Everyone should look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others. Make your own attitude that of Christ Jesus, who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be used for His own advantage. Instead He emptied Himself by assuming the form of a slave, taking on the likeness of men. And when He had come as a man in His external form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death even to death on a cross. For this reason God highly exalted Him and gave Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:3 11). 11
As you think back over the week, all of these things are difficult to do keeping a daily focus on Christ and what is eternal and not the temporary, sharing our lives with other people, sacrificially loving our wives and intentionally discipling our kids. All of these are impossible without one key attribute humility. If we don t have humility we will get bitter when we sacrifice for our family. If we don t have humility we will see the difficulties in sharing our lives with others and refuse to continue to do it. If we don t have humility we will believe we are owed the right to have the temporary pleasures of this world that lead us away from Christ. Humility is what allows us to lay down our lives for the sake of others. Look at this passage and see the humility of Christ. Seek the Lord today to lead you toward a heart of humility and away from arrogance. 1. Where do you see pride in your life? 2. What is one step you can take to move toward humility? 3. Who is in your life that will be honest and help you assess your life and see where you are walking in humility and where they see pride? Set aside a time to meet with them and ask them about it. Spend time asking the Lord to reveal the areas of pride in your life. Confess pride where you see it and ask the Lord to mold in you a heart of humility. Week Three Steps of Faith: March 18 24 Day 11 Therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God (Romans 12:1 2). 12
Surrendering our lives to the Lord is no small endeavor. As these verses point out, it means we present our bodies as living sacrifices to the Lord. Our lives are no longer our own, but are gratefully offered to the Lord for Him to use for His glory. This does not happen by being passive. It is an intentional decision to entrust ourselves to the Lord and to seek the Lord to renew our minds. This week will be about making conscious decisions to take steps of faith toward the Lord. 1. What is one area of your life you have a hard time trusting the Lord with? 2. What is one step of faith you believe the Lord is calling you to take? 3. What would it look like for you to present your body as a living sacrifice to the Lord this week? Ask the Lord to lead you to being a man that daily surrenders your life to Him. Spend time praying about the step of faith you believe the Lord has called you to. Ask Him to give you the strength to walk by faith. Day 12 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding; think about Him in all your ways, and He will guide you on the right paths (Proverbs 3:5 6). As guys we are good at trusting our own understanding. Have you ever thrown out an instruction manual because you knew exactly what you were doing, only to discover you didn t? Have you ever turned the map on your phone off because you didn t need it anymore only to figure out you got lost? We tend to think we are right and have things figured out. The problem is, by the time we realize we re really not right it s too late. This passage lays out for us clearly that our understanding doesn t come close to comparing to God s wisdom. The wisest thing we can do is rely on His wisdom and not our own. So, in humility, we ought to seek to trust the Lord and what He sees over what I think I understand and see. 13
1. Yesterday you wrote down an area of your life you have a hard time trusting the Lord with. How can you take a step toward trusting the Lord with this area of your life this week? Is there someone who can help hold you accountable in this area? 2. Look at the step of faith you wrote down yesterday. You ve had some time to think about it. Look at it again and see if you need to clarify anything to make it clearer or more easily measured. When are you going to take this step of faith? Is there anything that needs to happen before you take this step of faith? (someone you need to talk to, etc.) 3. Write down a time your own understanding got in the way of you trusting the Lord. What have you learned from this experience and how have you grown toward Christ because of it? Praise the Lord that His understanding is much clearer than yours. Ask the Lord to show you what steps of faith you need to be taking and to grant you the courage to take them. Day 13 Read Hebrews 11. As you read through Hebrews 11 you see a common phrase, by faith. All of these people took steps of faith because they trusted the Lord. We can read this chapter and feel completely inadequate. These people did incredible things and trusted the Lord through some of the most difficult of circumstances. But their faith was not cultivated primarily in these difficult moments. Their faith was cultivated well before these moments. They had trusted the Lord in everyday, average moments. As they built a pattern of trusting the Lord in the everyday, their faith was built ready to endure a much more difficult pressure against their faith. Today is a good day to cultivate faithfulness in the very small, trusting the Lord will build our faith for the bigger that is to come. 14
1. What are small ways you can cultivate faithfulness to the Lord today? 2. What is one area you want to grow in living by faith? What is a step you can take to grow in this area today? 3. In looking at this passage, how are you encouraged by these people who walked by faith? Ask the Lord to help cultivate walking by faith in the average, everyday moments and prepare your heart for the bigger moments so you are prepared to walk by faith. Day 14 Carefully consider the path for your feet, and all your ways will be established. Don t turn to the right or to the left; keep your feet away from evil (Proverbs 4:26 27). We have been seeking to move toward the Lord over the past three weeks and no doubt temptation has come in to move you off course. Maybe you ve wandered a little bit and are trying to come back and reestablish a pattern of getting into the Word or you ve stayed steady and continue to lean into the Lord. Either way, temptation will come as an appealing trap to lure you away from the path the Lord has put in front of you. Walking by faith and trusting the Lord is a daily decision. We have to wake up each morning and decide if we are going to trust the Lord and follow Him or trust ourselves and follow our own way. Be encouraged stay the course. It is worth it! If you have wandered, come back and seek the Lord to stay the course. Look around you and see who the guys are that are seeking to stay the course as well and spend time staying the course together. 15
1. What has been your greatest temptation to move away from the Lord over the past three weeks? 2. Who are the guys around you who are running hard after the Lord? Make time to get with them and pursue the Lord together. 3. As you have sought to love your wife, kids and other people around you, how have you seen the Lord work in their lives? Seek the Lord to help you stay the course and daily decide to follow Him. Day 15 But everything that was a gain to me, I have considered to be a loss because of Christ. More than that, I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Because of Him I have suffered the loss of all things and consider them filth, so that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but one that is through faith in Christ the righteousness from God based on faith. My goal is to know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, assuming that I will somehow reach the resurrection from among the dead (Philippians 3:7 11). We have come full circle back to the same passage we started with three weeks ago. Everything we have walked through has been to help us focus more clearly on knowing Christ and making Him known. At the end of the day, this is where we find success. The way we say this at FBG is love God, love people and help others do the same. There is no greater goal to give our lives to. In the midst of all the messages of the world seeking to define success for us, it is freeing to find the clear call of the Lord to simply seek to know Him. 16
Every man, no matter their history, skillset, employment status or finances can live out this purpose through the power of the Holy Spirit. 1. What is your plan for continuing to open the Bible daily? 2. Who are the guys you are in regular accountability with? 3. What have you seen the Lord do in your life over the past three weeks? Praise the Lord for all He s been doing in your life over the past three weeks. Ask the Lord to continue to teach you about true success that is found in a pursuit of Him. Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are taken from the HCSB, Copyright 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2009 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. HCSB is a federally registered trademark of Holman Bible Publishers. 17