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In this episode...

How to Know You're Ready for Success

https://faithfulontheclock.com/how-to-know-youre-ready-for-success

You want success like any professional. But do you have the right attitude and spiritual posture to handle it? Episode 152 of Faithful on the Clock explores.

Timestamps:

[00:04] - Intro

[00:42] - Episode focusing — approaching success spiritually, not logistically

[01:30] - You’re Ready Point #1 — You’re ready for success when you don’t let success be the thing that defines you.

[02:51] - You’re Ready Point #2 — You’re ready for success when you’re willing to sacrifice success once you have it.

[04:13] - You’re Ready Point #3 — You’re ready for success when you know what the success serves.

[06:15] - You’re Ready Point #4 — You’re ready for success when you have the right safeguards.

[07:53] - Summary and invitation to add to the list via LinkedIn

[08:13] - Prayer

[08:48] - Outro/What’s coming up next

Key takeaways:

1. Success readiness is spiritual, not just logistical. Most people prepare for success through strategy—degrees, systems, networks. But true readiness is about your heart posture and alignment with God before success ever arrives.

2. Identity must exist apart from achievement. If success defines you, it will distort both your relationships and your calling. You’re only ready when you know who you are without what you’ve done—and can carry that identity through change.

3. You must be willing to release success. Using the Abraham and Isaac parallel: if you’re not willing to surrender what you’ve built, then success has already become an idol. Readiness means holding success with open hands.

4. Success must serve a larger mission. If you don’t know what success is for, it becomes directionless and ultimately meaningless. Success is not the goal—it’s a tool that should clearly connect to your deeper “why.”

5. Safeguards determine sustainability. You need:

• People who ground you, offer wisdom, and keep you aligned
• Habits that protect your relationship with God and your well-being

Without these, success becomes destabilizing instead of fruitful.

CTAs:

1. Do a readiness check. Ask yourself honestly: If success came tomorrow, would it strengthen or destabilize me? Identify one area (identity, surrender, mission, or safeguards) that needs attention.

2. Define what your success serves. Write one sentence: “If I succeed, it will allow me to ______.” If you can’t answer that clearly, pause before pushing forward.

3. Put one safeguard in place this week. Reach out to a wise person or recommit to a grounding habit (prayer, rest, reflection). Don’t wait until success tests you—build the structure now.

What’s coming up next:

Are we making Christian love too complex? Guest Ahmard Vital joins Faithful on the Clock to share why we need to get back to simplicity and what that looks like in practice at work.

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Hey, listeners. You’ve found me, your host Wanda Thibodeaux, and you’re listening to Faithful on the Clock, the podcast for Christian professionals where every seed gets planted to get your faith and work aligned. There’s not a professional on the planet who doesn’t want to be successful. That’s one of the biggest reasons we get up and go to work, isn't it? But few of us actually question whether we are ready for the success we so passionately strive for. In this episode, I’m gonna give you my take on how you can tell if you’re ready to make it. Let’s get started.

When we think about success, I think most of us really focus on the logistics. So, for example, do you have the right degree, do you have the right network or even, you know, have you set up automation or started specific accounts. And the idea in all of that is preparation and management. You’ll be ready for success when you’ve set up certain resources and have a way to keep everything smooth. So, that makes success discussions a natural extension of strategic planning.

But today, I want to talk about being ready for success in terms of being spiritually in the right place. Where do we need to be with God in our heart and what kind of attitude do we need to have before we start really going after success?

So, the first thing I want to say right out of the gate is that you are ready for success when you don’t let success be the thing that defines you. And what I mean by that is, we often define success according to achievement — that is, everything that we’ve done. And the things that we do, we end up using those things as a proxy to tell other people who we are. And the problem with that is that people don’t get to see God’s real design for you. They start to think that just because you’ve excelled or been involved in something that that’s what God’s called you to do. And of course, that then interferes with not only your self-expression and service to the Lord, but also with the other opportunities and the way that you hold relationships with other people. So, it’s absolutely critical that you first have a really solid, clear sense of who you really are. You have to be able to say, “Do I know who I am even without the accomplishments, and will I be able to maintain that sense of identity consistently as my responsibilities or opportunities change?” Because identity is the thing you can carry across any success you might have, and it’s gonna ground you even when you have to pivot from one area to the next.

The second thing to ask yourself is, “Am I willing to sacrifice success once I have it?” And here, I’ll pull out the story of Abraham and Isaac. If you know that story, God has promised Abraham He’ll give him a son. But when God finally delivers a son, Isaac, to Abraham after decades of waiting, God asks Abraham to go and sacrifice Isaac. And part of the reason for that was to reveal to Abraham just how much he loved God. And the idea is that success cannot be something we put ahead of God. It has to stay something that we are willing to let go of to remain obedient to God. And that’s really hard, I think, for a lot of us, because success is really the thing we wait our whole lives for. It’s the thing we chase. We even say, “I’ll know God loves me by the way He provides for me… by letting me be successful.” I know people, they’ve got big projects, what comes out of their mouths? “I gave birth to this book or project or business” or whatever it is. And we love it like it’s Isaac delivered after waiting. But it’s not! You are only ready to pick up success when you are willing to put it down in humility for God’s sake.

The third thing is, do you know what the success serves? If you meet the people, you get the money, all of that happens, what are you then going to do? How are you going to apply what you’ve gained in a way that can glorify God? If you don’t know that, you’re working blind for something you can’t even see. You know, we talk a lot in business about having a why, and that’s kind of what I’m getting at here. There has to be a larger reason to get to the next level. Because a lot of the time, what happens is, people haven’t identified their deeper mission. And then they end up tossing all the success at the wall. They try all kinds of things, but they don’t have any real sense of direction, and then what happens is that, because they don’t have that why or direction, they feel like they don’t have a purpose. And all of the success they have starts to feel really meaningless, because everything is just so unfocused. So, you’re ready for success when you are thinking about what the success enables you to do. You see it as a means, not the goal. As a quick example here, I can use my writing. Now, you might say I’m successful when I have all these writing clients and I’ve published a set number of books, right? But to me, if you follow my personal work, you know that I am called to reconnect people to the joy of God. Especially in the area of trauma, which makes people feel so unworthy to God, I truly want them to understand that they can recover that. So any income I get, any publicity the writing delivers, all of those successes are opening space for me to talk to people about how God still wants joy in their lives. That’s my mission. I want to use all the success I have to make sure people hear that, and to me, that’s the real success objective. And hopefully, with that example, that gives you a better sense of the kind of why you need to have as your foundation.

Lastly, you’re ready for success when you have the right safeguards. Now, I’m not talking about, you know, you’ve got some kind of firewall software or legal service or any of that. That’s back to preparation and strategy. What I’m talking about with the safeguards is two things. First, it’s the right people. Do you have people, wise counselors, who can keep you on the right path with God, who can be there when you need to make a decision about what’s right and wrong? Are there people who can just sit with you and be present when the success gets really challenging, who you can count on to steady you through all the things you maybe didn’t expect? Because I’m telling you, you’re gonna need people who can offer some empathy, and money and power and fame, they can tempt you into all kinds of trouble God doesn’t want you to get in. And then the second thing I mean with safeguards is, do you have habits you can stick to that can remind you to put God first and also take care of yourself? I know a lot of people, they start getting successful, and then as demands start piling up, they give up their prayer time, or they’ll stop doing the hobbies that make them feel good. I think you’re only ready for success when you have some activities that can really serve as a framework for the rest of what you do, when you’re committed to following through, because they support so many other things in your wellness and relationship with God. Having those kinds of elements as a regular practice you can intentionally protect really helps you establish boundaries so you don’t get sucked off course as you try to serve.

So, those are the four biggest things I think are necessary before you are ready for success. I’d love to hear if you have any points to add to the list — if there’s something you’ve learned in your own journey, you can send me a message on LinkedIn, and I’ll pass it all along so we can all support each other.

But let’s close out with a prayer as always.

Lord, as we consider success today, I pray for all my listeners that You would give them clarity about what’s driving them in what they do. Let them see what success is going to let them do for You. And Lord, whatever the specific mission is You have for us, help us remember that success is a matter of love and relationship, not titles or assets or other things of the world. If we love, we never fail. In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen.

Those are the thoughts I have for you today, listeners. And I just pray that God paves the right paths so that your success makes the deeper mission work you do for Him a joyful endeavor. If you haven’t done it yet, go ahead and sign up for our email list at faithfulontheclock.com. Next time, we’ll talking with special guest Ahmard Vital about why it’s important to keep Christian love simple and what that actually looks like in the workplace. I’ll see you right back here in two weeks for that, everybody, and be blessed.