A Three-Part Formula for Success
Genesis 24 (selected verses)
Sunday July 2nd, 2023
Rev. Rhonda Blevins, pastor
Now Abraham was old, advanced in years, and the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things. 2 Abraham said to his servant, the oldest of his house, who had charge of all that he had, “Put your hand under my thigh, 3 and I will make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and earth, that you will not get a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I live, 4 but will go to my country and to my kindred and get a wife for my son Isaac.” 9 So the servant put his hand under the thigh of Abraham his master and swore to him concerning this matter. 10 Then the servant took ten of his master’s camels and departed, taking all kinds of choice gifts from his master, 12 And he said, “O Lord, God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today and show steadfast love to my master Abraham. 15 Before he had finished speaking, there was Rebekah, who was born to Bethuel son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham’s brother, coming out with her water jar on her shoulder. 22b The man took a gold nose ring weighing a half shekel and two bracelets for her arms weighing ten gold shekels 23 and said, “Tell me whose daughter you are. Is there room in your father’s house for us to spend the night?” 24 She said to him, “I am the daughter of Bethuel son of Milcah, whom she bore to Nahor.” 25 She added, “We have plenty of straw and fodder and a place to spend the night.” 26 The man bowed his head and worshiped the Lord.
28 Then the young woman ran and told her mother’s household about these things. 29 Rebekah had a brother whose name was Laban, and Laban ran out to the man, to the spring. 31 He said, “Come in, O blessed of the Lord. 33 Then food was set before him to eat, but he said, “I will not eat until I have told my errand.” He said, “Speak on.” 34 So he said, “I am Abraham’s servant. 35 The Lord has greatly blessed my master, and he has become wealthy; he has given him flocks and herds, silver and gold, male and female slaves, camels and donkeys. 36 And Sarah my master’s wife bore a son to my master when she was old, and he has given him all that he has. 42 “I came today to the spring and said, ‘O Lord, God of my master Abraham, if now you will only make successful the way I am going! 45 “Before I had finished speaking in my heart, there was Rebekah.
50 Then Laban and Bethuel answered, “The thing comes from the Lord; we cannot speak to you anything bad or good. 51 Look, Rebekah is before you, take her and go, and let her be the wife of your master’s son, as the Lord has spoken.” 52 When Abraham’s servant heard their words, he bowed himself to the ground before the Lord. 61 Then Rebekah and her maids rose up, mounted the camels, and followed the man, and the servant took Rebekah and went his way.
62 Now Isaac had come from Beer-lahai-roi and was settled in the Negeb. 63 Isaac went out in the evening to walk in the field, and, looking up, he saw camels coming. 64 And Rebekah looked up, and when she saw Isaac, she slipped quickly from the camel 65 and said to the servant, “Who is the man over there, walking in the field to meet us?” The servant said, “It is my master.” So she took her veil and covered herself. 66 And the servant told Isaac all the things that he had done. 67 Then Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah’s tent. He took Rebekah, and she became his wife, and he loved her. So Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death.
The world’s most successful and wealthiest man is dying. He has made peace with that.
But what is bothering him so much is that no one in the afterlife will even know that he has amassed such a colossal personal fortune. On Earth, everyone knows he’s a self-made man who built this huge fortune from scratch, but he can’t take it with him. Not that he could spend it, of course, but just to SHOW everyone what a great success the poor boy had become.
He broods over this so much that his guardian angel is worried. One night the angel flies to heaven to consult Jesus. Jesus says: “You know earthly wealth has no place here.”
The angel replies: “I know Lord, but he’s been such a good man. He was a selfless man on so many counts, he did so much for charity, ran his business with a high degree of ethics. He’s only human. He can’t help having this little quirk. Isn’t there something we can do to ease his mind?"
Jesus thinks a moment. “All right. Let me see his film.”
The angel plays a film of this man’s life, and seeing his struggles and accomplishments, Jesus is moved to tears. He tells the guardian angel, “Find a discreet way to tell him that I will allow him to bring one suitcase—only one. And he can fill it with whatever wealth he chooses. When he dies, his suitcase and its contents will be brought to heaven with him.”
The angel goes down and delivers the message to the dying, successful, wealthy man.
The guy is happy, but what should he bring? He can’t settle down on only one thing. Our money would mean nothing to people from another time, jewels could be faked, stocks and bonds could not be traded so they’d be just paper. Finally, it dawns on him: gold! Gold has been valued throughout history and never gone out of fashion.
He sends out for the biggest suitcase he can find, fills it with gold bars, and sets it beside his deathbed. Now he can die in peace, which he does shortly thereafter.
True to the promise, the man arrives at the Pearly Gates, suitcase in hand. Saint Peter greets him warmly and says, “All right, let’s see what was so important to you that eternal life and bliss wasn’t enough.”
The man proudly opens the suitcase, stuffed with row after row of little gold bars.
Saint Peter stares at it, puzzled, and sighs in utter disbelief: “But . . . why did you bring pavement?”
Today I invite you to consider two important questions:
1. What is success?
2. How do we achieve it?
Our scripture lesson today tells the story of a man who was a success, at least in one important task he was given to do. We never hear his name throughout the story—he’s only called “The Servant.” But he played an important role in the unfolding narrative of Israel. Although we never learn this man’s name, I want to suggest to you that his life was a rousing success, and that through this one task he was given to accomplish, we can learn much about how we can become successful as well—at least in the eyes of Eternity.
Here's the tricky thing: success in human eyes may look quite different than success in the eyes of God.
Knowing this, I did the standard Google search. I typed in “Three-part formula for success.” Here was the top three-part formula for success from my Google query:
1. Passion: positive energy even during tough times.
2. Purpose: having meaning in your life.
3. People: optimizing your relationships.[1]
This was from a blog entry on a website called “Success.com.” Passion, purpose, people. That’s not too bad from a secular point of view.
I took my query a step further, asking Artificial Intelligence to help me out via ChatGPT. Here’s what ChatGPT suggested as a commonly cited three-part formula for success:
1. Vision: a clear and inspiring long-term goal or objective.
2. Strategy: a plan designed to achieve your vision.
3. Execution: implementing your plan.
That’s not too shabby, if you’re a robot. Sounds like something on a quiz in “Business 101.” There’s no heart in this, and certainly no faith. When I get to the end of my life, I don’t think I’m going to wonder, “Did I execute the strategy based on my vision?”
When I think about success, and what I want to challenge you to think about related to success, is having a definition of success that considers eternity. A definition that takes into account that God has a calling for each of our lives—a task to accomplish unique to each of of— even when we don’t or can’t recognize it.
Let’s think back to Abraham’s servant from our scripture lesson today.
Abraham gave him this important task: to travel to Abraham’s homeland to find a wife for his son, Isaac. Because we’ve skipped ahead already, there’s no spoiler alert here . . . we know he was successful with this one, highly specific task. He found a young wife for Isaac from among Abraham’s kinsmen: Rebekah.
Let’s learn from the successful servant; let’s see if there’s anything from his life that we might apply to our lives today. As you might imagine, I believe there are some insights from his success that we can apply to our lives: we can follow his Three-Part Formula For Success every day of our lives.
We don’t know anything about this servant—only that he was the “oldest” of Abraham’s house (meaning he had been with Abraham for a long time.) He probably had no idea that there would be one task—one task out of the millions, billions of tasks he would complete for Abraham—one task that would bring God’s plan for Israel to fruition (and make him successful in the eyes of Eternity to boot!)
Is there any way we can know if or what one task there is for us to do to bring God’s dream for the world to fruition? Many people go about life thinking success is amassing great wealth, putting stack of gold in a proverbial “one suitcase,” only to discover that it’s nothing more than pavement in heaven. How can we make sure we’re living our lives so that we’re eternally successful, fulfilling our unique role in God’s unfolding plan for human history?
Here's what we can learn from the servant.
Step 1: Pray. We simply ask God to make us successful in the work God has for us to do.
Listen to the servant’s prayer in verse 12: “O Lord, God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today and show steadfast love to my master Abraham. The servant reiterates this prayer to Rebekah’s father and brother, telling them in verse 42: “I came today to the spring and said, ‘O Lord, God of my master Abraham, if now you will only make successful the way I am going!”
“Make successful the way I am going.” This is an excellent prayer for each day of our lives. Because God usually doesn’t speak to us in audible ways, we have to discern what God is saying to us and the direction God gives to us. And sometimes—lots of times—we have a choice to make: left or right, stop or go, silence or speak, watch TV or call a friend.
One of the most famous poems in American culture begins this way: “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.” It’s about choice, isn’t it? The poem concludes: “I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”[2]
“O God, make successful the way I am going!”
When I was in college, I had a terribly difficult decision to make. It was one of those life-altering decisions, and I knew it. The pressure was too much, so I confided my difficulty with a friend who gave me a little poem that helped me tremendously:
Just do your best,
Pray that it’s blest,
God will take care of the rest.
I admit it’s a little trite, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve leaned on this little poem when I’ve had a difficult decision to make. It’s a lot like the servant’s prayer, isn’t it:
“O God, make successful the way I am going!”
Step 1 in the Three-Part Formula for Success is “Pray.”
Step 2: Perceive. After we pray, we open our eyes to see how God will answer our prayer. Sometimes, God answers exactly how we hope God will answer. I don’t have to tell you that sometimes God answers prayer in unexpected ways. And occasionally, God answers our prayers in precisely the opposite way that we hoped. And yet, it’s answered prayer nonetheless.
The servant perceived that Rebekah was the answer to his prayer. He had to have his literal and metaphorical eyes open to perceive this.
Listen again to how he described how this all went down—see if you can detect step one and step two: pray and perceive:
42 “I came today to the spring and said, ‘O Lord, God of my master Abraham, if now you will only make successful the way I am going! 45 “Before I had finished speaking in my heart, there was Rebekah.
“There was Rebekah.” He perceived she was the answer to his prayer. He tested his perception in the conversation with Rebekah’s brother and father. They confirmed his perception was accurate. Success!
This step 2, “Perceive,” is all about awareness. The buzz word these days is “mindfulness.” It’s not just seeing, but understanding—knowing on a deep level.
The word for “perceive” is from the Latin percipere: “per” means “thorough,” and “capere” means “to grasp.” Put them together, and “perceive” means to “thoroughly grasp.”
We go through so much of life sleepwalking, don’t we. Things are happening all the time around us and we don’t notice them. Psychologists call this “inattentional blindness” or “perceptual blindness.” This is when we fail to perceive the obvious simply because of inattention.
Take for instance your heartbeat. You have one (I presume!) But you’ve not been thinking about it until I just mentioned it. You have a pulse (I presume! Let’s check . . . ) It’s been quietly ticking this entire time we’ve been in worship together, but you’ve been blind to it. “Perceptual blindness.”
God can be moving and active in the world all around us, and we are so often “Perceptually Blind” to it. When we pray, our awareness is heightened so that we are less blind to God’s movement in the world. When we pray, our eyes (metaphorically) widen, more light gets in, and we can better “Perceive” God’s work in the world as well as God’s answer to our prayer.
Step One is Pray.
Step Two is Perceive.
Step 3: Praise. First we pray (which opens our heart and our eyes), then we perceive (and we check our perception), and when we recognize God’s activity in our circumstance, we praise!
Twice in this brief story, we encounter the servant offering praise to God: the first time after Rebekah extended hospitality to the him, “26 The man bowed his head and worshiped the Lord.” The second time was after Rebekah’s father and brother offered Rebekah to him for Isaac: 52 When Abraham’s servant heard their words, he bowed himself to the ground before the Lord.
If we skip this step—if we fail to offer God thanks and praise—then we fail to complete this cycle of success. Our success is not complete, spiritually, until we recognize God as the source of this (and every!) successful endeavor.
This step is easy to skip. We like to think we are the masters of our own destinies. This is ingrained in our “bootstrap” culture. But there is no Eternal success when we claim the victory for ourselves.
The Apostle Paul says it this way in his letter to the church at Corinth: “But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Cor. 15:57)
Because any success we may enjoy, because every victory is given to us by God, this third step is critical in the Formula for Success—praise!
Several years ago, Anne Lamott wrote an excellent little book about prayer entitled, Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers. When I read it, I found it brilliant. I think Lamott is right, that there are only three kinds of prayers: the kind in which we say some version of “help,” the kind in which we say some version of “thanks,” and the kind in which we say some version of “wow.”
What I didn’t realize until studying this three-part formula for success through this story of the servant in Genesis 24, is that Lamott has the wrong order. It should be “Help, Wow, Thanks.”
Think about it:
· Step 1: Pray (Help me, God!)
· Step 2: Perceive (Wow, you helped me, God!)
· Step 3: Praise (Thanks for helping me, God!)
Help. Wow. Thanks!
This is the Three-Part Formula for (Eternal) Success.
I’ll leave you with this thought: we can’t take a suitcase full of gold to heaven with us. But we can pray, perceive, and praise our way into God’s kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.
Money-back guarantee.
[1] Elizabeth Lombardo, “The True Success Formula; 3 Strategies for Achieving Your Goals,” https://www.success.com/the-true-success-formula-for-achieving-your-goals/#:~:text=It%20entails%20three%20pillars%20that,People%3A%20optimizing%20your%20relationships
[2] Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken.”