In 2014, Facebook bought the messaging app WhatsApp for $19 billion, making its co-founders instant billionaires. CEO and co-founder Jan Koum was living on food stamps barely two decades earlier.
This may sound like a rags-to-riches Cinderella story, but not so. Koum earned his billions with brilliance and fortunate timing. Other billionaires who started at the bottom, including Starbucks’ Howard Schultz and media mogul Oprah Winfrey, used scholarship money to leap into the limelight. Businessman Shahid Khan once washed dishes for $1.20 an hour while attending college. Today he’s worth upwards of $4 billion.
What we achieve for Christ has little to do with our starting point. It’s all about our willingness to be used by God. Here are six steps found in the Word to become a mega-success for Christ:
First, we accept 1 Timothy 2:5 as core to our Christian walk:
“For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”
Next, we look to 2 Timothy 3:16-17 as our requirement to spend time in the Word of God:
“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.”
Third, Galatians 3:28 exhorts us to accept all men and women who are redeemed as equal in the Father:
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
We also understand that Romans 5:12 tells us there is no “golden ticket” where sin is concerned:
“Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—”
Fifth, we find our strength in Acts 1:8:
“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
Finally, Acts 2:4 reveals the truth of our success. We step out in the power of Christ and do something, even if it’s out of our comfort zone.
“And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.”
Jay Koum didn’t walk a certain path to riches. Howard Schultz risked everything on someone else’s idea. Oprah Winfrey was fired from her job. Shahid Khan? He did whatever it took, even when he had to get his hands in the dishwater, because he wasn’t going to be content with anything less than success.
When we want success in Jesus more than anything in the world, we can start from scratch, and we’ll rise to the top every time.
It’s our goal Christ wants us to focus on, not our humble beginnings.
Copyright © 2016 MyChurchNotes.net
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