Am I Succeeding?

         When you have a job to do, you should want it to come out the way that it was intended.  When I had to unload that wagon load of corn, it was finished when the last ear went into the corn crib.  I never left a few ears in the corner of the wagon.  Sometimes you would have to spend hours doing a particular job, but the satisfaction finally came when the last pass, or the last furrow or the last row of corn was cultivated.  Then you could say that you had success in doing what you had intended to do.  Joshua 1:8-9 says, "This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.  Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the LORD thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest."   
       Webster, in his early addition of a dictionary defined "success" as "The favorable or prosperous termination of any thing attempted; a termination which answers the purpose intended;..."  The "successes" of a believer are determined by the Word of God.  The world, on the other hand, has its own measure of success and seems to be more determined by the amount of money accumulated or fame acquired rather than the Biblical description of success.  The prescription for success has been set forth in this passage and one can soon see the difference for the Biblical description and the world's description.   Prosperity and good success will be determined by how well you observe the instructions in verse eight.  Simply put, we are to meditate of the Word of God both day and night.  Everything that we do needs to be measured by the standard of the Scripture.  Now, in the case of Joshua, he was going to have to meditate on the "Book of the Law."  That's all he had at the time.  He was going to be immersed in God's instructions in the first five books of the Bible.  We have that as our guideline today.  If you want to know how to please God, just take a look at the first five books of the Bible.  Certainly, we have more than that as we now have the full Scriptures in our possession.  The difficulty comes when we make our own definition of success.  Most people want to end up being successful but how are you going to measure whether you are successful or not?  Take a look at God's Word and you will find whether or not you are succeeding  in life.  Praise God today for His Word and for His recipe for success.