4 Biblical Ingredients to Being a Successful Man

Here are 4 biblical ingredients to being a successful man

1. To Be a Successful Man, You Must Have the Right Definition for Success

You will hit the target you are aiming at. Profound, right?

It’s worth highlighting this simple truth because sometimes we get results we don’t want because we’re aiming at things we didn’t realize we were aiming at.

In other words, your definition of success will direct your aim. When you think being a successful man means making a lot of money, sleeping with a lot of women, or looking a certain way, those are the things you will chase. However, in the process, you will lose your soul. Mark 8:36, “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?”

On the other hand, if you think being a successful Christian man means you need to act like Mr. Rogers, have no friends, and be poor all your life, you will feel like a loser. 1 Corinthians 16:13-14, “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.”

To be a successful Christian man, you must be aiming at the right picture (Revelation 12:10-11). And the only way you will avoid having a worldly view and a religious view is to really study the Scriptures. Godly men are a complex combination of gentleness and strength, passion and duty, living in the world while not being of the world.

2. To Be a Successful Man, You Must Know How to Repent

To be a man on mission, you have to accept that you will sometimes get off mission. But his grace is sufficient (2 Corinthians 12:8-10)!

If you can’t accept that, you will be forever derailed when you don’t live perfectly. When you accept that his grace is enough and that you are a work in progress, when you keep repenting and keep pushing forward, no matter how many times you fail, you are able to be a man who gets back on mission whenever he stumbles.

You haven’t ruined your life when you fail. You’ve ruined your life when you quit. Proverbs 24:16 (NLT), “The godly may trip seven times, but they will get up again. But one disaster is enough to overthrow the wicked.”

So never quit! The only way the devil wins is if you stop repenting. The cross is enough for all of our sins (Romans 5:20). When you think God needs you to be perfect to be useful, you will never be useful. Useful men are those who accept that they will never be good enough on their own merit. We need Jesus’ merit transferred to our account (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Failure is not your greatest enemy. Quitting is your greatest enemy. Giving up and living in your sin is the only sin that can destroy you, proving you were never actually saved to begin with (1 John 1:6, 2:19, 5:16-18).

3. To Be a Successful Man, You Must Accept that Failure Leads to Success

The best of men do not always win. But they never shrink from those battles that need to be fought.

And even in defeat, all is not lost. As T.J. Watson said, “Success is on the far side of failure.”

There’s never been a man who has done something uncommonly great without first pushing through the failures where most men commonly quit. The 1% don’t have fewer challenges. They simply kept going where the 99% give up. Micah 7:8-9 proclaims:

Do not gloat over me, my enemy! Though I fall, I will rise. Though I sit in darkness, the Lord will be my light. I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him, until he pleads my cause and executes judgment for me. He will bring me out to the light; I shall look upon his vindication.”

4. To Be a Successful Man, You Must Confront Your Fears

Every man’s fears are different, but we all have fears. Only by facing them can we succeed.

Running towards your fear will cause an explosion of growth in your life because it will also spark an explosion of motivation within you. Why? Because we can either choose fight or flight. If you want to become a fighter instead of a runner, you have to let yourself be cornered by your fears. Let them come. Don’t hide anymore. Stop pushing them away. Lean into them. Start swinging. Hack that monster to pieces. Find solutions. Fight!

The Spirit of the living God is within you. You have what it takes, “for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control” (2 Timothy 1:7). He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world (1 John 4:4).

When you run from your fears, you are also running from your motivation. When you face your fears, you are injecting yourself with motivation. When you clearly identify what you fear the most and then you choose to face that fear head-on, you will also be going after what you want the most with the most amount of internal resolve you can muster.

Those who accomplish much are the ones who press into their fears, knowing that the only path to freedom is forward.