I don’t think God is that impressed with what we Christians call success today, because much of it is based on a secular concept rather than a biblical one.

There’s a good example of this in the life of Moses. The Israelites were in the wilderness with no water and ready to stone Moses. So Moses asked God what he should do and God told him to speak to a certain rock at Mt. Sinai. By doing so, water would pour forth.

But speaking in front of all those people was a frightening thought to Moses because he had a speech problem. It was an impediment so bad that his brother Aaron spoke on his behalf. However, Moses had witnessed incredible miracles with the shepherd’s staff God had given him. So much so, it seems he had become more confident in the gift (the staff) than the giver (God).

It’s possible God wanted Moses to trust Him with his weakness on this occasion, but the pressure was on Moses to produce water and rather than speak to the rock as God instructed, he struck it with the staff. Amazingly, water poured out and the people were ecstatic and Moses was once again the hometown hero.

God was not ecstatic. Moses was disobedient and no matter how successful he looked in the eyes of the people, he had failed in God’s eyes and God forbade him to enter into the Promised Land.

There are Christians today, including Christian leaders, who may look very successful in the eyes of people, but may not be successful in God’s eyes. It may be wrong motives, personal ambition, moral failure or any number of other spiritual issues.

God has a place for every one of us and true spiritual success is when we are obedient to His calling on our lives and when we are living in right relationship with Him. Our responsibility is obedience and what happens after that is God’s responsibility.

Ecclesiastes 12:13 sums it up. “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter; Fear God and keep His commandments for this is the whole duty of man.”

Thanks for joining me and whatever you do, keep showing up.

The president said a few days ago that he is “leaving the door to discussions open for the Iranians.” Well I have a question. When was it reopened? As I recall, he opened the door to discussions not long after his election and they slammed it in his face. They treated him like a third world leader. This was a major diplomatic setback for the US.

And now they have the rest of the world sitting one their heels scared stiff, knowing that they are going to build a nuclear weapon that will threaten the entire Middle East, but more specifically Israel, but not doing anything about it.

How serious is it? We’re talking about Iranian crazies who, unless they’re stopped, will soon have a nuclear weapon. The same Iranians who are declaring their intentions of “wiping Israel off the map.” A country whose military leader proclaims 10 million volunteers for martyrdom. A country whose Supreme Leader publically called for the death of all Jews and the destruction of Israel, claiming Islamic justification and saying, “the Islamic government of Iran must take the helm.”

Amidst all of this the best the president has to offer is “an open door to discussions”. And this after the Iranians slammed the door years ago. There is one thing you can be sure of; the Israelis understand the danger to Israel. Their patience with a moribund American President, who they never considered a good friend, is wearing very thin. Unless Obama does something meaningful soon, you can expect the Israelis to launch an attack on Iranian nuclear plants and this will have a dramatic impact on the Middle East and hard to predict just how serious and far-reaching the implications will be. For me, the bottom line is that when Israel does what it needs to do for self-preservation, and underneath all the condemnation of Israel from the UN and the Arab world, there will be a collective sigh of relief that somebody had the guts to do what had to be done before it was too late.