Dealing With Ambition // Essential Life Skills, Part 4

A Different Perspective Official Podcast

We each have a sense of destiny built into our DNA. This sense that, well, there’s a plan out there somewhere, somehow. Something that we’re meant to do. Something that we’re meant to achieve. And unless we lay hold of that destiny, in a sense, we feel lost, as though we’re missing something.

So let me ask you, is it right to be ambitious? My dictionary tells me that ambition is a strong desire to do or to achieve something. A desire, a determination to achieve success. As someone who believes in Jesus, I’ve often struggled with this one, because success, well that can be truly self-seeking, self-fulfilling. Jesus, after all, said this – Luke chapter 9, verse 23:

If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.

I don’t know, but that radical view – and it is a radical view – of what it means to believe in Jesus, to live your life for Jesus, well, it doesn’t seem to fit too well with this notion of success. And frankly, I’ve lived my life, at least the first thirty-six years of it, often with the wrong sort of ambition in my heart.

Here’s what it looks like, this wrong ambition. You want to make a splash, you want to be noticed, you want other people to think well of you. You want, you want, you want … to be successful. Yeah, there’s money involved. Hey, who doesn’t want to have money? Who doesn’t want to live in a nice big house and drive the sort of car that other people will notice? Who doesn’t want to be able to afford the sort of clothes that’ll make them look sharp and catch people’s eyes?

That’s precisely how the thinking goes. And so what you do, what I did, is you climb over the top of other people, you walk over them, crash through them, even destroy them to get to your success. That’s what wrong ambition looks like. I ought to know. When I was in business, I was known to make grown men cry. I wanted to win. I wanted to succeed. How about you? Does any of that sound even vaguely familiar?

And I can tell you, sadly, you see that sort of behaviour even amongst people who profess to believe in Jesus. Jesus saw it too and this is what He had to say about this wrong kind of ambition. John chapter 5, verse 44:

How can you believe when you accept glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the one who alone is God?

That’s the bottom line isn’t it? How can we possibly believe in Jesus, how can we possibly follow Him and serve Him and love Him with all that we are, when we’re seeking glory for ourselves? And that’s what many people do. We want to put our best foot forward. We want other people to think well of us, to admire us. And when you do that, when you seek glory for yourself, it becomes virtually impossible to believe in Jesus. That sort of ambition, well, it’s simply not God’s plan for your life. But there is an ambition, a zeal that God does want you to have.

Jim Collins is a man who, with a research team that he established, set out to determine what it is that sets the great companies apart from the ordinary ones. What are the common threads, the common attributes that run through truly great companies, when compared to the also rans? That was the question.

So, he chose a number of stellar performers on the New York stock exchange, and set about doing the research to get answers to those questions.

What he discovered, not surprisingly, is that one of the things that set the great companies apart was great leadership. And one of the essential leadership attributes that he writes about in his book, "Good to Great" is this:

Great leaders embody a paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional will. They are ambitions, to be sure, but ambitious first and foremost for the company, not for themselves.

I’ve thought about that … a lot. And the conclusion I’ve come to is that Collins’ research simply bears out the truth of what Jesus had to say about ambition. Mark chapter 10, verses 42 to 44:

You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognise as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are like tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; whoever wishes to become great must become your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be the slave of all.

The sort of zeal, the sort of ambition that Jesus is looking for, in you and in me, is the sort that sets out to serve others. The sort that removes us from the limelight, the sort that gives up the clamour and the desire for glory. The sort that is driven to seeing others experience the love of Christ through the sacrifices that we make.

Think about it. Who are the people you admire most in your life? Who has achieved greatness in your eyes? Come on, it’s those who’ve served you the most, right? Those who’ve sacrificed the most for you, correct? Not the ones who’ve been self-seeking and sought to lord it over you. Later on in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul puts it this way, Romans chapter 12, verses 10 and 11:

… love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honour. Do not lag in zeal, but be ardent in spirit and serve the Lord.

Yes be zealous. Yes be ambitions. Yes be driven. But for the purpose of showing honour to others. For the purpose of serving God.

So, what drives you? What motivates you? What are you ambitious for? Yourself? Your own image? Your own success? Or for outdoing others in showing honour, and serving the Lord? Because God is looking for ambitious people. Driven people. Zealous people. People who will get on and serve Him for His glory. Are you one of those?

I was at a function recently and I ran into a retired businessman, a man whom I’d met one time before. Now this man, over his career, had been extremely successful. He’d been the chairman of boards of some very large public companies. He would often appear in the business pages of the newspaper, being reported on with great respect. By any measure, he had been very successful and, you’d have to imagine, he was pretty wealthy by this time, in his early seventies.

Now, he and I happened to pull up in our cars outside the function at the same time. We parked next to each other. And the first thing that struck me was the modest vehicle that he was driving. Certainly not one of those cars that screamed ‘success’ at you. And as I chatted with him during the course of the evening, one thing stood out for me.

His great humility. You don’t often hear those two words in one sentence – greatness and humility. But actually, and this becomes pretty obvious when you think about it, true greatness only comes to those who are humble. Or put it the other way around, humility is an essential ingredient, perhaps the essential ingredient, to greatness.

I think sometimes we over-complicate life. We try to imagine what success looks like and we think we have to jump through this hoop and that one, impress this person and that one over there, dress like this, speak like that, be seen, be admired … in fact what I see when I look around is a lot of people trying to please one another. So, let’s take it back to basics. Let’s look at something truly simple that leads to true greatness. Micah chapter 6, verse 8:

He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Right there is a path to greatness – and let’s face it, your greatness is a legacy that lives in other people’s hearts. Greatness is how other people perceive you.

Firstly, do justice. Be honest and decent. Stand up for those who are in a difficult place. Be the one that the other people can trust and rely on.

Secondly, love kindness. Don’t you love being around people who are kind to you? You want to be around them. You love them, because first they showed kindness to you. Love kindness.

And thirdly, perhaps most importantly, walk humbly with your God. Don’t seek the glory or the limelight. Don’t try to be better than anyone else. Don’t forsake God and go your own way. Just walk humbly with your God.

That’s what godly greatness looks like. Justice, kindness, humility. That’s the greatness that’s ready and waiting for you.