Wrong Ambition
John 5:44 How can you believe when you accept glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the one who alone is God?
So let me ask you, is it right to be ambitious? My dictionary tells me that ambition is a strong desire to do or to achieve something. A desire, a determination to achieve success. As someone who believes in Jesus, I’ve often struggled with this one. Because success, well that can be truly self-seeking, self-fulfilling.
Jesus, after all, said:
If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. (Luke 9:23)
I don’t know, but that radical view – and it is a radical view – of what it means to believe in Jesus, to live your life for Jesus, well, it doesn’t seem to fit too well with the notion of success. And frankly, I’ve lived my life, at least the first thirty-six years of it, often with the wrong sort of ambition in my heart.
Here’s what it looks like, this wrong ambition. You want to make a splash. You want to be noticed. You want other people to think well of you. You want, you want, you want … to be, successful.
Yes there’s money involved. Hey, who doesn’t want to have money? Who doesn’t want to live in a nice big house and drive the sort of car that other people will notice? Who doesn’t want to be able to afford the sort of clothes that’ll make them look sharp and catch people’s eyes?
That’s precisely how the thinking goes. And so what you do, what I did, is you climb over the top of other people, you walk over them, crash through them, even destroy them to get your success. That’s what wrong ambition looks right. I ought to know. When I was in business, I was known to make grown men cry. I wanted to win. I wanted to succeed. How about you? Does any of that sound even vaguely familiar?
And can I tell you, sadly, you see that sort of behaviour even amongst people who profess to believe in Jesus. Jesus saw it too and this is what He had to say about this wrong kind of ambition:
How can you believe when you accept glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the one who alone is God? (John 5:44)
That’s the bottom line isn’t it? How can we possibly believe in Jesus, how can we possibly follow Him and serve Him and love Him with all that we are, when we’re seeking glory for ourselves? And that’s what many people do. We want to put our best foot forward. We want other people to think well of us, admire us.
And when you do that, when you seek glory for yourself, it becomes virtually impossible to believe in Jesus. That sort of ambition, well, it’s simply not God’s plan for your life.
That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.
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