I think it’s kinda foolish—a naive hubris—when I read book titles about the “Ten Keys to Success” or hear talks embodying “all ya gotta do is….” Let’s face it: success has many facets and if we were to catalog them all, it’d be a significantly large list. Jack Canfield’s book The Success Principles is nearly 500 pages long. So obviously the ingredients to success are many and varied. In that light, it feels a little silly for me to write about the “Two Keys to Success.”

In my Time Alone With God (TAWG) this morning I came upon that piece of wisdom in Proverbs 23: 26 which says “My son, give me your heart and let your eyes keep to my ways.” Imbedded in that simple sentence are two really important concepts.

Give Me Your Heart

The heart is the center of a thing. The heart of the matter is what’s really at its core. The heart of the city is its urban center. The heart of a tree is the hard wood in the middle of the softer exterior. And the heart of a man is the center of his being.

God says “Give me your heart.”

Many people view giving to God in physical, financial, or chronological terms. They give money. They sacrifice time to show up at a church service. While those things have a certain importance and necessity, they really miss the point. In teaching the first Christians Paul said “A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart….” Romans 2:28-29

We give our hearts to God when we bow our head in humility and acknowledge that He is God and we aren’t; when we put ourselves in subservience to him and seek his leadership in our life; when we acknowledge our sinfulness and our need for a perfect Savior.

There’s an occasion when we do this for the first time, and then we need to do it daily—recenter our heart, recalibrate our spirits to the tune and tempo of the Great Musician.

But when we give God our heart we aren’t done. We’ve only just begun.

Let Your Eyes Keep To My Ways

Once your stepped into God’s realm, submitted before him, there’s the need to learn how to walk in this new world. The gravity is a little difference. You can get thrown off balance. He says things like “It’s better to give than to receive” and “The first shall be last.” His ways are different than the human ways to which you’ve been trained.

Notice he said “Let your eyes” keep to his ways. That’s intentional. It’s with the eyes that we focus and concentrate. Its through the eyes that we absorb into our brain things for us to ponder. If written today, in our vernacular, he might have said “Look at things this way….”

Success comes when we begin to align our thinking with God’s thinking. From our thinking comes our words and our actions. Those words and actions produce results for us, but before we did them we thought them. So we have to train ourselves to “think like God thinks. But how?

Read the Bible. Whatever else the Bible is, its God’s revelation to man. It’s a big long letter from the Father. It contains family history, guidance, direction for today, and hope for the future. It paints a picture that clearly spells out what it means to be in this family—to bear this name—and what the Father’s hope is for the children’s future. As I read I do so with pen and notecards in hand, capturing the things that the Holy Spirit causes to leap off the page into my spirit, so that I can make any adjustments to my thinking that may be necessary in order to produce the actions most likely to lead to success.

Read those who are ahead of you. I have a world-class group of mentors, some of whom I’ve met and some I haven’t, but they all mentor me through their writings. Just today I was praying for one of them—Mark Batterson. Mark has met me once. He won’t remember that. But today, I was so grateful for how what he had written was ministering to me that I stopped and prayed for him and his family.

Your Path to Success

You are on a path to somewhere. Is success that destination? Why not? It’s just as easy to go there as anywhere, and far more rewarding. Start on your knees, focus your eyes, train your mind, and produce the fruits that lead to Abundant Living!