Success and Fruitfulness

"Success and Fruitfulness"
Hollywood Connect Newsletter (07/23/09)
(c)2009 Hollywood Connect
www.hollywoodconnect.com

I’ve talked to numerous truly creative people from all sorts of places who have confided in me their times of discouragement in the pursuit of their creative callings, and it so often comes down to this: that despite their earnest and extended efforts, they have yet to see Success. Very sincerely, they share with me how close they are to throwing their hands up and walking away because Success has seemed so elusive. Some have even told me that Success seemed so elusive, so fantastically unattainable at the outset, that they decided not to attempt the pursuit of their Calling at all.

I suppose that, in the grand scheme of things, this is understandable. We live in a culture in which Success, as it is popularly defined, is the gold standard by which all are measured and either celebrated or found wanting. We see it as the standard in business, in government, in education, in the world of sports, entertainment, and the arts, and sadly enough, many, many times in the Church.

Oh, I don’t mean that Success is an inherently bad thing – it’s not. (Well, I suppose that depends upon what it is we have become successful at doing…) In fact, Success is something to be thankful for when we experience it. I work towards and want to be successful as an artist and in other areas of life. What I mean, rather, is that Success is not the measure that God intended for us to use when He called us to this adventurous life. It is not and never should be the standard by which we should measure ourselves and one another. When we do so, we set all of ourselves up for all sorts of discouragements, great and small.

That’s because God never called us to be successful. He called us to be fruitful. And there’s a difference. I find it interesting that in the Bible, every time that “success” is mentioned, it is in the context of “…and God gave him success,” whereas He reminded His people over and over again to “be fruitful.” In fact, this instruction to bear fruit was the very first command He gave after creating man and woman. The responsibility of fruitfulness was put into our hands, the responsibility for our success He kept for Himself. There are a lot of people who spend all their time struggling to learn the will of God for their lives, when they have ignored His will found in this Prime Command: Be fruitful. Live out who I created you to be.

Ultimately, God’s command of fruitfulness is the easier one – it flows directly from what God has already loaded into us as we walk through the continuing process of Redemption. Success as a standard involves chasing a sort of “completeness” that the world set up and which it is constantly redefining. Is it any wonder that so many people live life in disheartened exhaustion? They live under the never-ending pressure to meet an ever-changing standard.

Aren’t you glad that God commanded us to be fruitful, rather than to be successful? Again, please don’t misunderstand me: success can be a very good thing, and in each of our Callings, we hope to see it as we proceed with hard work, perseverance, and excellence. But it isn’t the ultimate measure of a man or a woman. Still, some people spend so much time worrying about being successful, they forget to be fruitful.

But when all is said and done, the opposite of failure is not success. It is fruitfulness. And that’s the secret of life on the Vine.

Shun Lee
Director
Hollywood Connect

This Week’s Quotes - Fruitfulness

See golden days, fruitful of golden deeds,
With joy and love triumphing.
– John Milton, poet, author & civil servant

You've got to go out on a limb sometimes because that's where the fruit is.
- Will Rogers, entertainer

When the root is strong, the fruit is sweet.
- Bob Marley, singer-songwriter & musician

Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful.
Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending,
ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey.
But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.
– Winston Churchill, statesman, historian, writer & artist