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One day, the Lyaconians hailed Barnabas and Paul as gods and tried to offer sacrifices to them, and the next day they attempted to murder Paul.
Even in the light of these words [Barnabas and Paul] with difficulty prevented the people from offering sacrifice to them. But some Jews arrived there from Antioch and Iconium; and having persuaded the people and won them over, they stoned Paul and afterward dragged him out of the town, thinking that he was dead. (Acts 14:18-19)
Crowds have always been fickle—quickly changing their allegiance from one person or idea to another one. Think about Jesus: they went from “Blessed is He Who comes in the name of the Lord” to “Crucify Him” in less than a week!
Jesus wasn’t surprised by this. He knew what was in men’s hearts and never built His hopes or His ministry on them (John 2:23-25).
So why do we?
Why do we equate a large church attendance or lots of views of our online content as “successful” and anything less as “failure”?
Jesus didn’t want or need the approval of a large crowd. Instead, He heard, “This is My beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17, 17:5).
Paul didn’t want or need the approval of a large crowd. Instead, in his final letter he noted that with the exception of Luke, everyone else had abandoned him. And still some of his last words were, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for His appearing” (2 Timothy 4:7-8).
If we are measuring success or failure by merely humans standards, we are bound to go from elated to crushed over and over again.
There is only one metric of success we should ever give weight to:
We should only desire to hear our Master say, “Well done” because we faithfully stewarded the gifts and opportunities He gave to us.
Let’s stop this thrilled-disappointed-thrilled-disappointed cycle by taking our eyes and hearts off of numbers, and resolving to keep our eyes and hearts solely on our Savior.
P.S. If this topic intrigues you, please consider checking out my book Shepherd Leadership: The Metrics That Really Matter.
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Craig T. Owens 