Your life is successful when...

One of the problems that seems to be so common amongst all people is Aimlessness. Do you sometimes feel like your life is aimless? Like you don't quite know which direction to exert yourself into or which direction to put your focus on; your energy into. I've gone through similar seasons in my life and I've realized this one thing that when I seem aimless is because I've lost sight of what my ultimate goals are about. In other words if I could define what ultimate success looked like, I would have a picture, I would have a goal to run after. But sometimes that picture becomes very dim and vague. But often times people live their lives that way. You know they they just run after any kind of goal only to find out that it wasn't true success. because they they didn't start off with the right definition of success in mind. So what I did was I pulled up a few famous names and I want to read to you their quotes on how they define what it means to be successful in life. I'd like to start off with Richard Branson he's a billionaire and he said "in my opinion true success should be measured by how happy you are". Mark Cuban said the definition of success is "waking up in the morning with a smile on your face knowing it's going to be a great day". Warren Buffett said I measure success by how many people love me". Then Maya Angelou said "success is liking yourself, liking what you do and liking how you do it". Former President Barack Obama said "success isn't about how much money you make, it's about the difference you make in people's lives". Now Jesus told a story that helps me understand success. He said that there was a master and he had three servants. The master was gonna go away on a long trip so what he did was he delegated to the first servant five talents to the second servant two talents and to the third servant one Talent. After a long long journey he comes back and he holds them accountable for what they did with what was given to them. To the first one he says what did you do with the five I gave you he said I made five more. Here's ten back to you. He said to the second servant what did you do with the two I gave you he said well I made two more. Here here's everything I made back the four talents. While the master responded to those two servants, well done good and faithful servant you were faithful over a few things, I will now make you ruler over much. Think about that. Number one the master didn't just celebrate them for their faithfulness but he also promoted them and he said enter into the joy of the Lord. Then he comes to the third servant and he said what did you do with the one talent I gave you. Well this guy started making excuses. He said things like while I know you to be a hard master. I was in fear of you and so what I did was I took this one talent you gave me I buried it and here it is here's your talent the one that belongs to you. Well the master was angry. He called him a unfaithful worthless servant and then he commanded this servant to be cast into outer darkness. So that's that's a rough rough judgement but the point is that Jesus said to the faithful ones, well done good and faithful servant you were faithful our little now I will make you ruler of much enter into the joy of the Lord. This story that Jesus gave us is a prophecy of a future judgment every one of us will one day stand at. Every one of us stand before God and given account of our lives. My point is this friend that it doesn't matter how much you accumulate in this life. It doesn't have matter how much you achieve in this life. It doesn't matter how famous you become in this life. The first day in heaven when you stand before the eternal judge and you hear the words well done good and faithful servant the moment you hear those words you know that this life was successful but not hearing those words means this life was a failure no matter how much you attained accomplished or achieved. So I want to encourage you not to live towards the end of this world but live towards the beginning of the next world. Make that your ultimate goal. Make those words your definition of true success in this life and only when you when you are able to define true ultimate success will your life no longer be aimless because even if it is the smallest task done with that goal in mind you will never again be aimless.