Many successful people will look at all of their accomplishments and say, “Look what I did!” They take pride in accomplishing something on their own and not needing any help. Well, we don’t accomplish anything in this world alone. All of our gifts come from God. He guides us, even in small ways, to the successes we find in life.
Without God, we wouldn’t even exist and we wouldn’t have any hope of eternal life. While being successful in life is something to strive for and work towards, spending eternity in Heaven should be our ultimate goal. Too many people spend too much effort improving their careers and other personal projects and not enough energy on improving their spiritual life.
How can we ever repay God for what He has done for us and continues to do for us? We repay Him by listening to Him, loving Him, and following Him. We can never fully repay Him, but we do our best. I don’t do good things for my kids with the expectation of getting better things in return. I do good things for them because I love them. True love doesn’t need repayment, but it does help to have the feeling reciprocated. Any relationship is stronger when love is flowing in both directions instead of just one.
Let’s never stop trying to improve ourselves in every aspect of this life. However, never forget what our ultimate goal in life is. As mentioned in Matthew 16:26, “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world yet loses his soul?” Our ultimate gift to God will be when we present Him with our soul that we made even more beautiful by using our God given free will to choose to love.
