What If You’re Winning the Wrong Game?

You are never going to win a game if you completely miss the point of it. You can have the highest score, the most attention, and everyone around you convinced that you are winning, but if you have misunderstood the entire objective, none of it really matters. I think the same can be true of the way we live our lives.

The world gives us countless ways to measure whether we are “winning.” How successful are you? How much money do you make? How many people know your name? How many friends do you have? Are you attractive, accomplished, admired, or influential? None of these things are automatically bad, but none of them are the point of our lives either. We can spend our entire lives becoming successful according to the world's standards while completely missing what God created us for.

Jesus asks in Mark 8:36, “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” Think about how radical that question is. Jesus does not ask what good it is to gain some success. He says the whole world. Even if you somehow obtained everything this world could possibly offer you, it would still be worthless compared with knowing Christ.

Our ultimate purpose is to glorify God. Scripture tells us, “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” (1 Corinthians 10:31). Jesus also commands His followers to “go and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). We are here to know Christ, glorify Him, love others, and make Him known. That means the question is not simply whether we are successful, but whether we are successful at what actually matters.

God can absolutely give us careers, friendships, opportunities, talents, platforms, and accomplishments. The problem begins when the gifts become more important to us than the One who gave them. Your career can glorify God. Your friendships can glorify God. Your talents can glorify God. Even your success can glorify God. But none of those things were ever supposed to replace Him as the purpose behind your life.

There are people God has intentionally placed around you who need to see what following Jesus looks like. This does not mean treating every person as a project or forcing the Gospel into every conversation. It means genuinely loving people, living faithfully, refusing to compromise what God has called good, and being willing to speak about Christ when the opportunity comes. Jesus says in Matthew 5:16, “Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” Notice where the attention is supposed to end: not with us, but with God.

That is what makes this so challenging. We can become so concerned with being liked by people that we forget we were called to point people toward Jesus. We can spend years building our own name while rarely speaking His. We can become successful, popular, accomplished, and admired and still have to ask ourselves: Am I living for something that will matter in eternity?

One day, the things we use to measure success here will not matter. Popularity fades. Accomplishments are forgotten. Money stays behind. The approval of other people cannot follow us into eternity. But what we do for the glory of God has eternal significance.

So work hard. Pursue the opportunities God gives you. Build beautiful friendships. Use your gifts well. There is nothing wrong with succeeding, but never confuse success with purpose. Do not become so consumed with winning according to the world's scoreboard that you completely miss the point.

Jesus is not an addition to a successful life. He is the reason we live at all.

Know Him. Glorify Him. Love people. Make Him known. Because you can gain everything the world calls success and still miss what matters most.