RLH: Failure and Success

For a week or so in October of this year, the email devotionals I receive daily from Insight for Leaders covered the topic of Failure and Success. The one for October 31 was about not competing with other servants of God. What Dr. A. W.Tozer, a pastor, wrote in The Price of Neglect, pages 104-105, was about comparing pastors and congregations to ones own, but the words certainly apply to other things.

Because it is so hard not to play the comparison game when one is in the writing business (where numbers and sales—her own and those of others—are constantly thrust at a writer), I've taken Dr. Tozer's prayer and made it my own. The changes I've made are bracketed.

Dear Lord, I refuse henceforth to compete with any [Christian novelist]. They have [readerships] larger than mine. So be it. I rejoice in their success. They have greater gifts. Very well. That is not in their power nor in mine. I am humbly grateful for their greater gifts and my smaller ones. I only pray that I may use to Thy glory such modest gifts as I possess. I will not compare myself with any, nor try to build up my self-esteem by noting where I may excel one or another in Thy holy work.

I herewith make a blanket disavowal of all intrinsic worth. I am but an unprofitable servant. I gladly go to the foot of the class and own myself the least of Thy people. If I err in my self judgment and actually underestimate myself I do not want to know it. I purpose to pray for others and to rejoice in their prosperity as if it were my own. And indeed it is my own if it is Thine own, for what is Thine is mine, and while one plants and another waters it is Thou alone that giveth the increase.

Amen.

Robin Lee Hatcher is the Christy and RITA Award winning author of over 45 novels. Learn more at her web site (http://www.robinleehatcher.com/) and on her Write Thinking blog (http://robinlee.typepad.com/).