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Who Said It … Steven Roy

Steven Roy is associate professor of pastoral theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. Prior to coming to Trinity, he served as a pastor for 12 years. He enjoys family activities, reading, jogging, and following current events and sports. Steven and his wife, Susan, have three adult children.

What he Said … Searching for "Success"

Thirty years ago, Tony Campolo wrote about the virtually irresistible lure of success: "Success is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. We dream of it as children, we strive for it through our adult lives, and we suffer melancholy in old age if we have not reached it." In our culture, Campolo observed, failure is the "unforgivable sin." It is to be avoided at all costs.

If this was true in American culture three decades ago, it is all the more true today. A Google search on the word "success" in early 2011 found more than 432 million results. Compare that to 284 million results in a Google search for "Jesus." A recent search of the library database at Trinity International University, the school where I teach, produced 104 titles of books dealing with a broadly theological view of the issue of success. The same search, however, revealed only four titles of books on a theological understanding of failure. Failure, it seems, is not something we even want to think about.

But what is success? And how should we understand failure?

Key Study Passage: 1 Peter 1:13-17

Adapted from What God Thinks When We Fail (IVP, 2011) by permission. All rights reserved by the copyright holder and/or the publisher. May not be reproduced.

Copyright © 2013 by Christianity Today/Men of Integrity magazine. Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.

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Prayer for the Week

Father, help me to define success the way you do; remind me that the only opinion that ultimately matters is yours.

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