By: Robert Buckner                                                          New King James Version

Most people desire success in life and are supportive of those they love being successful.

For the doctor, lawyer or engineer, success may mean studying hard and earning good grades; earning a college degree; and then earning lots of money. Success may also be considered attainable as an entrepreneur or tycoon with good business savvy. One may even find tremendous worldly success as a celebrity.

Regardless of the path taken, our contemporary worldly culture respects one who is willing to devote the considerable effort necessary to achieve personal success. Decent good people view success and the pursuit of success as a responsible and honorable investment of themselves and a worthy life-goal.

Survival, in its most basic sense, simply means staying alive. Fortunately, for most people, they will never know a situation or condition whereby they find themselves in a real battle for their life with another human being.

However, for a soldier, what he is able to learn in his combat training may very well be the difference in being successful when confronting his enemy. Success in surviving means that when tested in the ultimate challenge, as the victor, you get to live another day.

Survival has a very different meaning to those who have actually had to depend upon their own personal will and skills to maintain it. Certainly, this must be considered to be a very important and worthwhile accomplishment for the individual involved in the struggle. Quite literally the respect and honor of the reward in survival is to win life itself.

Two important distinctions in understanding the pursuit of salvation, as compared to success and survival is that salvation cannot be earned or won. That is, while salvation is attainable, it is not earnable or winnable.

However, the very most important distinction between success, survival and salvation is that only the value of salvation breaches the earthly threshold we know as life-and-death, and reaches into eternity.

For every degree earned; for every court decision won; the most successful professional in this world will have one final court appearance in the Court of the Most High, and he will not pass into eternity to live with God if he has not accepted God's mercy and obeyed God's law.

Neither will the greatest warrior win his battle against his final enemy, “Death,” if he has not first surrendered himself to his Lord and King and Master in obedience.

The important thing that all of the traits and characteristics of this world's rewards, (even the noble and honorable ones), have in common, is that they all have a shelf-life. They all become completely worthless at the very moment one's mortality is fixed!

It is very easy to become distracted by life while trying to live life.

Does the pursuit of your earthly goals and successes, honorable though they may be, exceed your time dedicated to your heavenly goals? If you were to compare the amount of time spent with God in His Word, and the time spent in pursuit of your worldly goals, how would the scale balance?

Satan is the master of subtle deception! He may present good distractions to keep you from God. But, remember the best good that the world can offer cannot compare to the goodness of eternal life with our Father in heaven!

Matthew 16:26 ~ "For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?