How Do You Define Success?

How do you define success?

This question matters, because how you define it determines whether or not you consider yourself successful or a failure.

If you define success in terms of money, and then you don't make very much money, then you've failed to be successful. If you define success in terms of power or prestige, but you fail to "win friends and influence people" then you'll consider yourself a failure.

But there's another way to measure success. A way much more important (and longer-lasting) than the ones I just mentioned above.

The way of holiness.

Augustine of Hippo was a popular young speech teacher and had an outstanding political career in front of him, but he gave it all up when he became a Christian, and then a religious, and ultimately was made bishop of a town in the middle of nowhere. Through it all he heroically loved and cared for the people God put in his way, and became known throughout the ages as one of the greatest saints in history.

Francis of Assisi tried to be a soldier but got captured on his first campaign. When they finally released him he went home to work in the family business (he turned out pretty bad at that too). But when Francis found his vocation in and through the poor, his message of complete abandonment to Christ spread, continuing all around the world today.

You see, these guys didn't measure success in the temporal. Rather, they measured success in the eternal. 

And we should, too.