I want to open with a story. There are lots of stories I could tell, but one in particular captures the moment when my entire understanding of success collapsed in on itself.
Cari and I recently celebrated our 32nd anniversary. I want to take you back to our second anniversary. We married in 1994, both still finishing college through night school while I was running eighty hours a week doing landscaping. I can still see myself in that beat-up truck with Elias and Diego, doing apartment complexes all over Atlanta. I actually drove past some of those same complexes last weekend—a little trip down memory lane that stirred up more emotions than I expected.
I had a business idea in college. Wrote a whole business plan with the help of a couple of mentors. Graduated in '96, went down to the Cobb County courthouse on October 1st, 1996, got a business license, and started making phone calls.
I made 1,200 phone calls in 100 days.
"Smiling and dialing," we called it. There was also this little technological innovation back then called a fax machine, and you could send faxes from your computer. Sprint had this promotion called Free Fridays where any calls or faxes you sent on Friday were free. So every Friday at 12:01 AM, my computer started faxing office furniture information to every dealer and wholesaler across the United States.
This was what they called "permission-based marketing"—I'd called each of them first. "Hey, I'm Russell, I'm a nice guy. Can I send you some information on office furniture?" They said yes, so they got a fax. Simple as that.
After 1,200 phone calls and 100 days of hustle, starting my business with nothing but a credit card to buy a computer, I got my first $5,000 sale in December '96. Three months later, my first $50,000 commission deal. And then it just took off.
Fast forward to 2000. My girls were born. We were still living in this quaint little 85-year-old farmhouse. Our mortgage—just for context—was $762 a month for the house and two acres. One vacuum cord could reach the whole house, that's how small it was. We couldn't even get a traditional mortgage at first because the land was worth more than the house. The house was a dump.
But we fixed it up. Remodeled it. Got it featured on HGTV, which was surreal.
We started a young married couples group that grew to 150 couples. At one point, 27 women in that group were pregnant at the same time. There was definitely something in the water. We were doing father-son and father-daughter retreats, men's retreats. I was living the entrepreneurial dream that people had been speaking over me since I was young.
By 2000, I was surrounded by dot-com customers flush with venture capital cash. They were growing like crazy, and I was selling office furniture left and right. I crossed over a million dollars in sales.
And then, almost overnight, everything changed.
You might remember the dot-com bust. In 2001, things started shuttering. Companies that seemed invincible were collapsing. And then one seismic event happened that nearly destroyed me.
We shipped 12 truckloads of office furniture to Dallas, Texas. I know exactly where that building is. I can still see the guy's face who shook my hand. All our trucks showed up, and they closed the gates and locked everything up. The bank had seized the entire building and everything in it.
Including all my inventory.
After about 90 days of trying to work through it, trying to salvage something, I was upside down over $125,000 in cash. Just gone. I was 28 years old.
More than the money, though—and the money was crushing—I was scared. Really, deeply scared in a way I'd never experienced before.
You see, up until that point, I had experienced success in every measurable category of life. My marriage was strong. Our church involvement was meaningful. We were giving generously to missions. We had money going into retirement accounts. By every metric I knew, I was winning.
And a huge part of my identity—maybe too much of my identity—was wrapped up in being Russell the Entrepreneur. Russell the Success Story. Russell the Guy Who Makes Things Happen.
Suddenly, that identity was under threat. My success criteria was collapsing. And for the first time in my life, I had a genuine identity crisis.
Out of compassion—and this changed our family dynamics—my father-in-law loaned me $250,000. We're still friends today! But that loan, while generous and necessary, fundamentally altered our relationship. There's something about owing a quarter million dollars to your wife's father that shifts the dynamics at Thanksgiving dinner.
Because we'd been so financially successful, the bank gave me all the credit I wanted. I started building infrastructure to protect myself from this kind of disaster happening again. Warehouses. Trucks. Employees. Within a year, I had almost 80,000 square feet of warehouse space and a bunch of guys running around managing inventory.
I propped up my business through debt. I was trying to create systems and structures to manage risk, but here's the thing: I'm not wired that way. I'm an entrepreneur, not a systems manager. And more importantly, I was running. I was scared. And I was trying to build my way out of fear instead of dealing with what was actually happening in my heart.
That business wasn't sustainable. It was funded by debt and fear, and both of those are terrible foundations for anything that's supposed to last.
But more than the business failure, I was experiencing a complete loss of orientation. What was God doing? What was I supposed to be doing? How was I supposed to sustain this? I couldn't pay my bills anymore. I was drowning in debt. I was trying to face my family, face my father-in-law to whom I owed money that was connected to his father through a family trust.
I was a mess.
I was dealing with emotions I didn't have categories for. My entire paradigm of how life worked, how success worked, how I worked—all of it was falling apart. And I didn't know how to stop the spiral.
I got help from some mentors, guys who could walk with me through it. But that next year was dark. Really dark. I kept asking myself: What am I running from? What am I running to? What kind of performance mindset has me on this treadmill where I'm terrified to get off because all I know how to do is double down and run faster, run harder?
I was heading for total collapse.
And then came June 8th, 2002.
I had what I can only describe as my "Oh God" moment in the backyard. I sensed—and I mean sensed in a way that was unmistakable—the Lord calling me to a place of rest. A place of restoration. Time to reset on life.
In that moment, I heard it clearly: "I'm inviting you to Colorado. Time to reset."
We moved 100 days later.
Our house sold within five days of putting up a "For Sale By Owner" sign. Someone paid cash. We had this beautiful property we were going to build on—million-dollar row, big plans for a big house. That sold for cash within five days too. Some guy literally called and said, "Hey, you want to come over to the house? We'll have drinks. I'll just give you a check."
It was like the Lord was physically ushering us toward something new.
I share this story because I know what it feels like to be "up and to the right" for a season—in every category of life. Family, ministry, finances, all of it pointing upward.
And I know what it feels like when it all collapses. When your criteria for success crumbles. When your identity—the story you've been telling yourself about who you are—gets called into question.
Many of you have similar stories. Maybe not the same details, but the same pattern. You had a definition of success. You were pursuing it. And then life happened, and suddenly that definition didn't hold up anymore.
That's what we're going to explore together in this chapter: What is success? How do we define it? And why do the definitions we've been handed so often fail us when we need them most?
What Is Success? The Question That Won't Go Away
Rob— helped get us grounded with the dictionary definition, because it's actually helpful: Success is "the accomplishment of an aim or purpose."
Simple enough, right? You have a goal. You take action toward that goal. You achieve the goal. Success.
But here's where it gets complicated: What's the goal? Who determined the goal? And what happens when you achieve the goal and discover it doesn't satisfy you the way you thought it would?
When we sat around discussing this on a Friday morning, one of the guys, Tom—pointed out that success is inherently tied to action and outcome. You don't go into battle wanting to lose. You go in wanting to win. That's the success outcome. The question is: What are you aiming at?
Andy—made a brilliant observation about the Hebrew text in Joshua 1:8-9. The NIV translation just says "success," but the Hebrew actually includes the word tov—"good success." Which implies there's such a thing as bad success.
Think about that. You can achieve your aim. You can accomplish your purpose. You can "succeed" by every measurable standard. And it can still be the wrong kind of success. Rob— the ladder your climbing maybe leaning on the wrong wall.
Or as several of the guys pointed out, other people might look at your life and say, "Wow, how successful!" while you're dying inside, knowing the success is hollow. The inverse is also true: you might feel deeply fulfilled and purposeful while everyone around you thinks you're underachieving.
The gap between external metrics and internal reality is where most of us live. And it's brutal.
Thomas—- reminds us of Ecclesiastes 5:18-19: "I realized that it is good and proper for a man to eat and drink, and to find satisfaction in his toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given him—for this is his lot. Moreover, when God gives any man wealth and possessions, and enables him to enjoy them, to accept his lot and be happy in his work—this is a gift of God."
There's something profound there about being able to enjoy whatever success you have. Not always wanting more. Not measuring yourself against someone else's highlight reel. Just being able to say, "This is good. This is enough."
But our culture doesn't reward "enough." Our culture rewards "more."
The World's View of Success: The Treadmill That Never Stops
Let's be honest about the water we're swimming in.
If you're American, you've been marinated from birth in a particular set of assumptions about success. The American Dream promised that if you worked hard and played by the rules, you could achieve prosperity, security, and happiness. Our Declaration of Independence enshrined "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" as inalienable rights.
Notice that: the pursuit of happiness. Not happiness itself. The pursuit. The chase. The striving.
The capitalist system that undergirds our economy rewards productivity, efficiency, and growth. Always growth. Always more. Always upward and to the right. If your business isn't growing, it's dying. If your portfolio isn't increasing, you're falling behind. If your career isn't advancing, you're stagnating.
The treadmill keeps speeding up. And if you can't keep pace, you're a failure.
The German sociologist Hartmut Rosa has written extensively about what he calls "social acceleration"—the phenomenon of life moving faster and faster, creating a sense that we're perpetually behind, perpetually inadequate, perpetually striving without ever arriving. Rosa calls this the "frenetic standstill"—we're working harder and moving faster, but somehow getting nowhere.
Here's what's insidious about this: the problem isn't just that we can't keep up. The problem is that we've internalized the idea that we should keep up. That if we're not constantly optimizing, constantly improving, constantly achieving more, something is fundamentally wrong with us.
Rosa argues that the antidote isn't simply slowing down (though that helps). It's cultivating what he calls "resonance"—building meaningful, responsive, emotionally engaged relationships with the world around you. Relationships that actually nourish your soul instead of just adding another optimization strategy to your productivity stack.
In other words, the cure for our success addiction isn't to succeed better. It's to fundamentally rethink what we're pursuing.
This isn't just an American problem, though our particular cultural moment intensifies it. Talk to someone from a collectivist culture—where success is measured by family honor or community contribution rather than individual achievement—and you'll hear different stories about pressure and expectation. But the tyranny is the same: perform or be ashamed. Achieve or be worthless. Succeed or be forgotten.
The metrics change, but the burden doesn't.
The Biblical View of Success: A Radically Different Scoreboard
So what does the Bible say about success?
Interestingly, Scripture doesn't shy away from the concept. But it measures success by a completely different set of criteria than the world does.
Let's start with Joshua 1:6-9, which several of the guys brought up in our discussion:
"Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their ancestors to give them. Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go."
Notice what God defines as the path to success: Courage. Obedience. Meditation on Scripture. Following God's commands.
Not productivity metrics. Not financial benchmarks. Not climbing the org chart.
Courage, obedience, and staying connected to God's Word.
Psalm 20 takes it even further:
"May the LORD answer you when you are in distress; may the name of the God of Jacob protect you... Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God. They are brought to their knees and fall, but we rise up and stand firm."
Here's the contrast: some people trust in their resources, their capabilities, their strategies (chariots and horses). They fall. But those who trust in the Lord's name—they stand firm.
Success, biblically defined, is about where you place your trust, not what you achieve.
Proverbs 16:3 says simply: "Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and he will establish your plans."
And James 1:22-25 turns everything upside down:
"Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do."
Matthias— read that passage from The Passion Translation, and it hit differently: "But those who set their gaze deeply into the perfecting law of liberty are fascinated by and respond to the truth they hear and are strengthened by it. They experience God's blessing in all they do."
Setting your gaze deeply. Being fascinated by truth. Responding to it. Being strengthened by it.
That's success.
Not achievement. Not accumulation. Not advancement.
Fascination with God's truth and faithful response to it.
How Setbacks Reframe Success: Lessons from the Valley
Here's what we've all discovered, sitting around that table on Friday mornings: our biggest failures have taught us more about success than our biggest wins ever did.
Sheldon— said it plainly: "What I've really learned was through the suffering and my failures."
He quoted Hebrews 12:11: "No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it."
That harvest of righteousness—that's what God is after. Not a bunch of money in the bank or an impressive title. A harvest of righteousness.
Sheldon— continued with his stunning observation from Hebrews 5:8: "Although he was a son, [Jesus] learned obedience from what he suffered."
Read that again. Jesus—the Son of God, perfect and sinless—learned obedience through suffering.
If Jesus had to learn through suffering, what makes us think we can shortcut that path?
John 15:2 talks about how God is the gardener and we are the branches. Every branch that bears fruit, He prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. Pruning is extraordinarily painful. But it's also how we actually grow.
As one of the guys put it: "I don't think success is necessarily put together perfectly. It's the man that we're becoming."
Andy— shared Psalm 73, which captures the crisis many of us have faced. The psalmist looks around and sees wicked people prospering. They have no struggles. Their bodies are healthy and strong. They're free from common burdens. They're always carefree, increasing in wealth.
Meanwhile, he's trying to live righteously and it feels like it's all for nothing: "Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure; in vain have I washed my hands in innocence. All day long I have been afflicted, and every morning brings new punishments."
The turning point comes in verse 17: "When I tried to understand all this, it troubled me deeply till I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood their final destiny."
And then in verse 26: "My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever... But as for me, it is good to be near God."
It is good to be near God. Not to have what others have. Not to achieve what others achieve. To be near God.
That's the reframe. That's what our setbacks teach us if we're willing to learn.
The Criteria for a Successful Life: Five Markers That Actually Matter
After wrestling with all of this—the stories, the Scripture, the tension between worldly metrics and biblical wisdom—I've landed on five criteria that I believe define a successful life. Not perfectly. I'm still working this out myself. But these are the markers I'm using to measure whether I'm actually heading in the right direction.
1. Character Over Cash Flow
I can speak and preach and write about character all day long, but when push comes to shove, what trips me up? What distracts me? What pulls my focus away from who I'm becoming and redirects it toward what I'm accumulating?
Cash flow.
Financial pressure has a way of revealing what we actually believe about God's provision, about our identity, about what truly matters. When the bank account is flush, it's easy to talk about character. When you can't make payroll or cover the mortgage, character suddenly feels like a luxury you can't afford.
But here's the truth: character is the only thing you're taking with you when you die. Your portfolio stays here. Your achievements stay here. Your reputation stays here. The man you've become—that goes with you into eternity.
Character over cash flow means prioritizing who you're becoming over what you're earning. It means making decisions based on integrity rather than opportunity. It means being willing to take a financial hit rather than compromise your values.
It means remembering that God measures success differently than Wall Street does.
2. Commitments in the Crucible
It's easy to keep your commitments when life is smooth. It's easy to let your yes be yes and your no be no when there's no pressure, no competing demands, no crisis forcing you to choose.
The crucible is different. The crucible is when life squeezes you, when the pressure is intense, when keeping your word will cost you something significant.
That's when your commitments reveal who you actually are.
I'm thinking about marriage vows when the marriage gets hard. Parenting commitments when your kid is breaking your heart. Business partnerships when the profit margins disappear. Ministry promises when you're exhausted and under-resourced.
Commitments in the crucible means showing up even when you don't feel like it. Following through even when it's costly. Staying faithful even when no one would blame you for walking away.
It's the difference between fair-weather faith and the kind of faithfulness that builds something lasting.
3. Champions of Others' Success Above My Own
This one cuts against every competitive instinct I have. I like to win. I want to be the best. There's a part of me that gets energized by being at the top of the leaderboard.
But here's what I'm learning: there's a deeper, more satisfying success in helping others achieve their dreams than in achieving my own.
This is what servant leadership actually looks like—not in some sanitized, theoretical way, but in the daily choice to prioritize someone else's advancement over your own. To celebrate their wins genuinely. To invest in their growth even when it doesn't benefit you directly.
Jesus modeled this perfectly. Philippians 2:3-4 says: "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others."
That's radically countercultural. Our world says: look out for yourself, because no one else will. Jesus says: look out for others, because that's what I did for you.
Championing others' success doesn't mean neglecting your own growth or responsibilities. It means holding your own success with an open hand, willing to sacrifice it for the sake of someone else's flourishing.
4. Capacity for Service Beyond Yourself
My father-in-law used to say, "Yeah, he doesn't have a pot to pee in." It was his way of describing someone with nothing to give, nothing to offer, no capacity to help anyone else.
Here's the truth: you have to have something in order to give something. You have to build capacity—financial, emotional, mental, spiritual—if you're going to serve others well.
This isn't about hoarding resources. It's about stewardship. It's about building infrastructure in your life so that when someone needs help, you actually have something to offer. When someone needs encouragement, you have emotional bandwidth to give it. When someone needs financial assistance, you have margin to provide it.
Jesus spent 30 years preparing for three years of public ministry. That's building capacity.
Paul talks about this in 2 Corinthians 9:8: "And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work."
Having all that you need isn't about luxury. It's about having enough capacity to abound in good works. To serve. To give. To help. To show up for others in meaningful ways.
Building capacity for service might mean getting out of debt so you have financial freedom to be generous. It might mean developing emotional health so you can be present for someone in crisis. It might mean growing in wisdom so you can offer counsel when asked.
Whatever form it takes, the goal is the same: cultivating the resources—internal and external—that allow you to bless others beyond yourself.
5. Consider It Joy in the Midst of Hell
Everyone faces some version of hell. Cancer diagnoses. Financial ruin. Relational betrayal. Professional failure. Crushing disappointment.
The question isn't whether you'll face hell. The question is: what will you be like when you're in it?
Can you still show up with kindness? Can you still find moments of laughter? Can you resist the bitterness that wants to consume you?
James 1:2-4 says: "Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything."
Consider it pure joy. Not fake happiness. Not pretending everything is fine. Pure joy—the deep-down assurance that God is with you and working through even this hellish experience for your ultimate good.
This is where the fruits of the Spirit become desperately real: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
When hell is breaking loose around you and you can still manifest these qualities, that's a miracle. That's the testimony of God's transforming work in your life. That's maturity.
It doesn't mean you're not hurting. It doesn't mean you're not grieving. It means that even in your hurt and grief, the Spirit of God is producing fruit that wouldn't grow any other way.
A Note to the Man Wrestling with His Paradigm
If you've made it this far, I'm guessing something in this chapter resonated with you. Maybe you're recognizing your own story in mine. Maybe you're in your own crisis, watching your definition of success crumble in real time.
Maybe you're exhausted from running the treadmill. Maybe you've achieved everything you thought you wanted and discovered it's not what you needed. Maybe you're flat on your back in a valley, wondering if you'll ever climb out.
Here's what I want you to know: you're not alone. You're not crazy. And the fact that you're wrestling with these questions—that you're willing to examine your assumptions about success instead of just mindlessly pursuing the next goal—that's actually evidence of growth.
The journey of rises and falls is universal. No one escapes it. But most people never stop to ask whether the ladder they're climbing is leaning against the right wall.
You're asking that question. That takes courage.
There's a scene in Psalm 131 that keeps coming back to me:
"My heart is not proud, LORD, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. But I have calmed and quieted myself, I am like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child I am content."
A weaned child isn't anxiously demanding more. A weaned child has learned to rest in the mother's presence without needing constant feeding. There's contentment there. Peace. A quieted soul.
That's what we're after. Not achievement for achievement's sake. Not success that impresses others but hollows us out.
We're after a quieted soul. A character formed in the image of Christ. A life that matters not because of what we've accumulated but because of who we've become and how we've loved.
The rises and falls will keep coming. That's life. But if we can learn to measure success by the right criteria—character, faithfulness, service, joy—then even the valleys become places of transformation rather than mere tragedy.
The journey continues. The next chapter explores the actual pattern of life—the cycles of order, disorder, and reorder that characterize every human journey. Because if we're going to navigate the rises and falls with any kind of wisdom, we need to understand the rhythm we're dancing to.
But for now, sit with these questions:
What criteria are you actually using to measure success in your life right now?
Where did those criteria come from—and are they serving you well?
What would it look like to redefine success according to biblical wisdom rather than worldly metrics?
Which of the five criteria—character, commitments, championing others, capacity, or joy—feels most challenging for you right now?
What's one small step you could take this week to align your life more closely with what actually matters?
Don't rush past these questions. Sit with them. Journal about them. Pray through them.
Because the examined life, as Socrates said, is the only one worth living.
And the redefined life—success measured by God's standards rather than the world's—is the only one that will satisfy your soul.
Welcome to the journey. It's going to be harder than you expected.
But it's also going to be better.
Chapter Challenge:
This week, I want you to do something concrete. Take 30 minutes—uninterrupted, no phone, no distractions—and write your own definition of success. Not what you think you're supposed to say. Not what would sound good on social media. What you actually believe, deep down, constitutes a life well-lived.
Then, next to that definition, write down five specific ways you're currently measuring success in your daily life. What are you actually tracking? What gets your attention? What drives your decisions?
Finally, compare the two lists. Are you living according to your stated definition, or are you being driven by metrics that don't align with what you say you believe?
The gap between those two lists is where the real work begins.