Why do you need God in the pursuit of your success?
By Adenuga Sunday Joseph

You need Him because He is eternal; He knows all things and can do all things; and the greatest news is this: He loves you so much and He wants to help you. Solomon, one time king of Israel, the son of David was the richest man that ever lived. I took time to study his life and the reason for his stupendous wealth and I discover the following truth: -
In the first instance, God loved Solomon even from the day of his birth,

let’s read from 11Samuel 12: 24,25
And David comforted Bathsheba his wife, and went in unto her, and lay with her: and she bares a son, and he called his name Solomon: and The Lord loved him. And He sent by the hand of Nathan the prophet; and He called his name Jedidiah because of the Lord.

The root of Solomon’s success is the love that God had for him since he was born. This type of love, no one can explain or justify, especially when you consider the circumstances that surround the marriage of his parents. Many people today will fault the holiness of his parents union and his eventual entrance into the world. But the Bible says God loved him despite the fault or sin or any negative condition of his parents. He was called Jedidiah, which means "the beloved of the Lord", to authenticate this love, the Lord announced this love through His prophet Nathan.

You, like Solomon are also "the beloved of the Lord". The Bible (the WORD of the Lord, which is more authentic than even the testimony of prophet Nathan) had declared in
John 3:16 that
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son that whosoever shall believe in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.
In John 3: 1,2 the Bible says concerning you and me
Behold what manner of love the father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knowest us not, because it knew Him not. Beloved now are we the sons of God… we shall be like Him…

God loves you as much as He ever loved Solomon, even now, I can say that His love for you, is more special than that of Solomon. Why is this so? This is so because His love for us did not come without the sacrifice of His first begotten Son; this gave birth to us in the spirit as joint-heirs with Jesus Christ: a privilege Solomon never shared or enjoyed. Consider how God explained it in the Bible, in the book of
Hebrews 11: 40
God having provided some better things for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.

He is referring to the saints in the Old Testament. All the fathers of faith in the Old Testament have lived tremendous lives of faith and holiness, God loves them but you see, God has provided some better things for us in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. Not only that, He gave us the promise of the Holy Spirit to permanently dwell and reside in us, a sweet communion they never enjoyed in all their days. What a blessing He has given unto us, we are so special, we are highly privileged, we are in the class of Jesus and all the Old Testament saints cannot be made perfect without us. Our lives and ministries compliment theirs and complete the job they had started for God long time ago.
Having considered the love of God for Solomon as the major root of his success in life, I now want to move a step further to the second reason for the stupendous wealth of Solomon. And that is, Solomon also loved the Lord.

Solomon loved the Lord also: this is balancing the equation. Many people today have refused to balance this equation. God loves them, they never return the love or reciprocate it. If in mathematics, you have an equation that is not balanced, you cannot get the prize until you balance the equation by making sure that what is on the left hand side of the equation is equal to what is on the right hand side. God had announced His love for Solomon, now to balance the equation; Solomon had to express his own love for God in
1kings 3: 3
And Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of David his father: only he sacrifice and burnt incense in high places.

The results of his loving the Lord were the two legs upon which his success stood. He loved the Lord and therefore walked in the statutes of his father; obedient to the law of the Lord: he served the Lord and also gave the best to the Lord. He offered a thousand burnt offerings to the Lord; you may recall that God accepted Abel’s offering because he offered the best he had: and it was only one sacrifice, but Solomon offered a thousand.

We reliably gathered from the Bible that God loves you, now do you love the Lord? God loves you, He gave you His best; His only begotten Son: will you love Him and give Him your best (treasure, time and talent)? The only way we knew of Solomon’s love for God was that He gave God so much offering that no other man had ever given before then. Your giving to God shows how much you love Him. In a later chapter, I will deal on giving as a spiritual law of success, but in this article, I want you to see the level of your response to God’s love whether it is powerful enough to bring you good success. How do you respond to His love in such a way that He will appreciate you? Jesus loves you; He died for you; how do you respond to this great sacrifice of love? Your success in life will rise to the degree you respond to this love of God. This is the only reason our Lord Jesus Christ admonished us to "seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all other things shall be added unto you". Success and good things of life are added to you as you respond to God in a loving relationship. Let’s read Jesus’ view on how He expects us to respond to His love,
see John14: 15, 21-23
If ye love me, keep my commandments…He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him…Jesus answered and said unto him, if a man love me he will keep my words: and my father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

The sign and evidence of your love for God is seen in the way you position yourself to be an excited doer of His word. Doers of the word enjoy the special privilege of carrying the presence of GOD, JESUS, and THE HOLY SPIRIT, everywhere they go. The result of carrying God with you everywhere you go is an unlimited success, for God never fails.