You are One my son.

You are one person among many people.

But did you know the power of one?

Of course you do!

Steve Jobs knew hardly anything about advanced electronics.

But his partner Steve Wozniak sure did.

Jobs was the visionary and had ideas that Wozniak skillfully implemented.

Together they started something really big in 1976.

A very small company located in a very small garage called Apple! 

 Today Apple's worldwide annual revenue totaled $233 billion for the fiscal year ending in September 2015.

 Jobs's official biographer, Walter Isaacson, described him as the "creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing."

In the Bible we read that when God wants something done, He always gives it to ONE PERSON to do- a Moses, a Peter, a Paul, a David, a Gideon, a Mary.

Just one person committed to a goal, is all God needs to change the world.

He's done it many times.

He will doubtless do it again.

God has a plan for those who believe.

God has a plan for YOU.

You and God together can change your world.

You have God given potential.

 For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
Jeremiah 29:11

  Our own family came to a New World three hundred years ago to establish a place where they could have religious freedom.

A place that they eventually called America.

They believed they could do it and they did it with God's help.

They had a goal and they accomplished it!

Today's generation has confused goals, for it believes that it's acts have no consequences.

It takes risk, but has few goals worthy of them, unlike three hundred years of American families who risked in hope of self-betterment and helping their children to prosper.

As our first TV reared generation got more input from advertisers than from parents, they grew up liking it's problems solved by products, not by changes in behavior.

It donates feverishly to find cures for diseases it will do little to avoid.

Denying its actions cause reactions, it has lost control of its future and demands, in compensation, that society be "fair"- that it gets what it wants, whether worked for and deserved, or not.

This is sad for them, but good news for you.

It means that 95% of the people you meet will never compete with you for success.

Most don't know they are allowed to try.

They lack what any goal-setting, successful 5 percent starts with- "permission" to try and to succeed.

The Soviet state, by killing off its successful 5 percent assured its own slow death and seventy-five years of poverty for its people, who were taught to believe success is a crime.

Unless your a leftover Marxist, you don't feel that way, I'm sure.

But what were you taught?

Poverty is better?

Success is a sin?

It ruins the environment?

It's bad for you?

It's greedy?

It angers God because it's so selfish?

Success is not selfish in it's end result.

In reaching our life goals, we do God's work, because our success creates more abundance for everyone to share!

The spill over is God's purpose behind all success in our work.

Producing payoffs far off-the-scale for the work involved, creating a cushion of abundance that protects the human family from inevitable hard times- that is what success is all about.

You don't have to take my word for it.

If you read the Bible, you'll have God's Word for it.

Does God want you to be a success?

The answer is in this question:

Do YOU want to be a success?

A true goal is an objective that is life-enhancing, specific, measurable.

Having only wishes, hopes and dreams with out a Goal will lack purpose and fruitfulness. 

Goals are meant to make life overall richer, fuller, happier, more enjoyable, longer, and better for many.

The God who loves success.

Remember that it is the Lord your God who gives you the power to become rich...

  But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, to become rich, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today.
Deuteronomy 8:18

God is not in the failure business.

Most scholars say the oldest book in the Bible is the book of Job.

Its more than a hard luck tale.

It tells of a good, successful man who loses everything on earth in a series of catastrophes.

Later, he gets it all back, double for his trouble, at God's hand.

God here shows us its OK to succeed.

People always think God wants them poor and humble.

What ever God's reasons, Job's tale is actually the very first of the sixty-six books that are our Bible and not Genesis. 

The first book of the Bible is Job the successful man of business!

So successful is Job, his heirs do not have to work, his investment prosper, his livestock multiply, his abundance is legend, and his children are decent people who love their parents.

Many modern readers pick up from Job's story only his suffering and pain.

They don't see the underlying success story, obsessing themselves with misery.

God says, yes, a lot of suffering goes on in this world, but its OK to succeed in your work if you can.

God made Job work for every shekel of it: He blessed his hard work.

God's blessing assured success, Job worked for what he got.

Angels did not tend his flocks for him or balance his parchment ledgers.

Nor did his business magically grow back over night.

He invested years of effort, time, and skill in rebuilding.

God gave the increase, as it says in the Bible, but Job put in the work.

If asked what virtue Job displayed, everyone would say "patience."

Job's very name is a byword for tooth-gritting endurance.

But were you to track his underlying success tale instead of the trail of tears, Job's patience shows up in a different light.

We're taught to think of his patience as helping him outlast a painful plight.

But there is much more.

For patience underlies success as well, that is, patience in the sense of persistence, repeated effort in the face of repeated failure.

Patience is as much the pattern of the entrepreneur or success-seeker as any biblical saint seeking to outlast painful hard times.

Job's patience helped his investments to succeed.

Over time his patience increased his herds and flocks, earning riches on all his investments.

14,000 sheep
6,000 camels
1,000 oxen
1,000 donkeys

In today's market these animals might be worth between $40 million and $75 million if sold for top dollar in the right market place.

Job's fortune, even now, would command respect.

Consider what business Job was in.

It's not enough to read that he had so many sheep, camels, oxen, and donkeys.

 At some point he had to do something with them-eat them, sell them, turn their hides into something.

He was not running a petting zoo.

It's reasonable, given hints in Scripture, that Job ran something like a used camel lot.

Except for the sheep, the other animals, all 8,000 of them, were valuable in the transport and hauling business, in trade caravans.

Job's business probably was located on an important caravan junction.

Location, location, location.

In this strong commercial environment, opportunities for investment and profit were above average.

So in Job's story, the oldest piece of the Bible, God shows Himself the friend, investor, and champion of a persistent person who maximizes his God given gifts to earn success in two realms- at work and at home.

God clearly is not against success.

He took the trouble to let us see how a God fearing man survived loss and failure and earned his success all over again.

Then he took the tale and built the Holy Bible around it.

Success Summary

* The Bible is the world's oldest "success book."
* God pays attention to how we earn and share our successes.
* Suffering is part of our human condition, but not our whole reason for being. The same is true of success.
* Job's success came from his own efforts, with God's blessing.
* God doesn't rejoice if you fail. He will help you try again if you want to succeed.

The truest meaning of success is not "to get up on top" (like the Italian restaurant owner next door to you) but "To get out from under!"

 That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither-- whatever they do prospers.
Psalms 1:3

In a universe that often seems on automatic pilot, God is in fact an active player.

He can use the physical things and events of our world to achieve His purposes.

He distills purpose out of chaos.

We may think chaos the enemy of God's purposefulness.

The fact is, all matter is structured on a platform of "perfect" chaos.

Were the perfectly random movement of subatomic particles in any way predictable ( and therefore "patterned"), the universe we know could not exist.

It would self destruct, fissured by those patterns.

Chaos underlies its existence.

Before we get twenty words into the Bible, we find God organizing chaos to do His bidding.

"The earth was without form, and void," is how the Bible expresses this chaotic condition.

But by the end of this second verse, we see the Spirit of God moving upon the face of the planet, bringing light and life to it.

In a world that to us seems chaotic and confused, God can work through seemingly random events to achieve His goals.

Few people ask God to make something worthy of their best efforts and hoped-for success.

Success is really not miracle territory.

Miracles result from the suspension of natural laws.

Success results from following natural laws which the Bible teaches us.

Prayer for success acknowledges this.

To be successful means to get what you hope for.

We need high hopes, for what we hope for, we surely pray for and work for as well.

Here is the ancient path for success or "getting what you hope for."

1. Set a measurable goal
2. Hold a clear vision of it.
3. Form a plan to reach the goal.
4. Follow your plan to reach the goal.

The Bible does not forbid wealth.

...Obey everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.
Joshua 1:8 

For all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever.
Genesis 13:5

God's purpose in all success is to create new abundance to assure the survival of the human family in bad times and in good.

Success benefits others.

But others fell on good ground and yielded a crop: some a hundredfold,some sixty, some thirty.
Matthew 13:8

Success is a multiplier, not a divider.

It makes more for everybody, doubling the wealth of humanity.

By multiplying the effect of our efforts, success serves as God's way of benefiting others even while you seek to benefit yourself.

Success is not selfish as some would make it seem.

Success generates out of proportion payoffs.

The seed of a good idea or a wise investment, as the Bible ( and the stock market) show, can repay itself thirty, sixty, or one hundred times and more.

These payoffs  are what

1. make society run,
2. make jobs available,
3. make charity possible.

Just look at the Christian owned and maintained In-And-Out Burger business!

They give jobs to thousands at higher pay than elsewhere and they donate to others from their profits.

God has blessed them exceedingly as evidenced by the long lines of cars at all of their locations.

True success always spills over to benefit many beyond the few who took the risk of trial, error, and investment.

So long as the poor, the lame dwell among us, we will need successful men and women among us too.

By individual success, society enriches itself.

It makes its gains through us.

Successful men and women are the roots that feed the tree of civilization.

Eliminate us for what ever reason, and the tree dies a slow death.

( Ask the Russians about this. The soviet state tried to disallow success for anyone, in the name of equality and fairness.

The blunder took seventy years to catch up with them, but it did.)

*The future is flexible, waiting for us to shape it.

*Faith both sees and relies today on the fulfillment of events in the future.

*Faith finds windows where others see walls. 

*Effective faith spills over and blesses others as well.

*Practical prayer - acting in faith upon belief- is stronger than word-prayer.

Success, it becomes clear after long reflection on the Bible and the world it challenges, is two kinds.

Success comes in two "powers," a first and a second, each for a different arena, both for the same ultimate purpose:

*Success- business or career success outside home.

*Success- family success at home-the most important one and God's reason for the other kind.

This common  purpose explains why all success goals must be life-enhancing.

The continuance of human life on earth is God's reason for the family.

Success helps families survive and prosper.

The goal driven few who follow their inner vision, not conforming to the common blindness of this matrix are successful.

They generate the surplus that makes a society rich enough to support the less capable and give a good life to all who will work for it.

Though widely sought, it is attained by only a few.

If it were easy everyone would be successful.

It takes sustained effort and hard work on our part.

But one day you will see the "Starbucks" of the Tanning world bless thousands because you stood out from the crowd like a Walt Disney with a vision of the future!

Love Dad 

( With some help from Richard Gaylord Briley)