The Secret of Success
Jan 1, 2023 1225
Here is the true secret of success! There are many self-help programmes, books, and websites that will give you lots of information about how to improve various aspects of your life. If you are looking to improve your health, wealth, or your relationships, then there’s help out there for you! And it can all get very confusing.
What if there was just one secret that unlocked all the best in life: the ultimate secret to success? Wouldn’t you want to know it.
The Bible gives us precisely the ultimate secret of success, the secret that underpins success in every aspect of your life.
Sometimes, you need to dig a little to find the best nuggets. In the same way, if you want to find this secret, you have to dig a little in the Bible. You find it in a rather obscure story in the Old Testament.
It happened in the time of the prophet Elisha, when there were a number of prophets with him. One day they decided to cut down some trees and build a bigger place where they could meet, so Elisha went with them, to where there were some trees growing by the river Jordan.
As one of them was swinging his axe against a trunk, suddenly the axe head flew off the handle and into the water. The man cried out, because it was a borrowed axe. The Bible points out that it had an iron axe-head, precisely because iron was so expensive. Not only would the man now not able to return the axe, but he probably would never be able to repay the debt that he would end up owing to the owner.
The prophet Elisha came to see what the commotion was all about.
In what happened next we find the ultimate secret to success in life. This is how the Bible tells us the story:
The man of God asked, “Where did it fall?” When he showed him the place, Elisha cut a stick and threw it there, and made the iron float. 7 “Lift it out,” he said. Then the man reached out his hand and took it (2 Kings 6:1–7, NIV.)
The first thing that this story tells us is that we need to know what the problem is. Where has the axe-head been lost? Where did it fall?
The ultimate secret of success has always had the Cross at its very core.
Notice that Elijah cut a stick and threw it into the river where the loss had occurred. When the wood hit the water, it miraculously made the iron axe-head float! There is something special about the wood! It represents the cross on which Jesus died. The Cross is the means that God used to restore that which was lost. The secret of every success in this life and in eternity always has the Cross at its very core.
Then Elijah told the man to take it, and so “the man reached out his hand and took it (v.7.) Now we find the greatest secret of all. It’s a gift! All the man had to do was to reach out his hand and accept it!
So, too, every success in life is, in reality, a gift from God, and especially the greatest gift of all: an eternity of happiness. We receive it be reaching out with the empty hand of faith and accepting the gift.
Just reach out your hand and take it.
Like the man who had borrowed the axe and then lost it, we too owe a debt. It is a debt we cannot repay. It is the debt of righteousness.
Jesus is the one who has paid our debt. The wood which Elijah threw into the water represents the Cross, by which the righteousness of God touched the depth of our sin so that were redeemed.
When all was lost, Christ has provided a miracle, and he offers it to you as a gift. You need to just reach out your hand and take it.
This is the secret of success – ultimate success – because, as Jesus taught, “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” (Mark 8:36.)
Alfred Wyson
Jan 4, 2023
Very powerful