Success

People often wonder how I've become so successful thus far in my life — how I achieve every ambition I strive towards.  It's not just a strong sense of self-determination coupled with self-discipline.  Those play a role as part of my temperament, but it's not by my work alone.  I'll explain briefly what it is.  Philippians 1:6, the Apostle Paul writing to the church of Philippi, I am sure of this, that He who started a good work in you will carry it on to the completion until the day of Christ Jesus.  That is the Christian life.  We are the people in whom God began a good work; God has entered inside us and is working in us and He will continue to complete the work that He began until the day Christ comes again.  We are not just people who have taken up a certain theory and are trying to practise it; it is God doing something real in us and through us.  Philippians 2:12-13, ...Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.  For it is God who is working in you, enabling you both to will and to act for His good purpose.  It is of God's own good pleasure that He is working in us both to will and to act — our highest thoughts, our purest aspirations, and our very righteous inclinations are from and of God, and they are brought into being in us by God Himself.  God has given me each of my aspirations that I possess — past, present, and future — and by obeying Him and loving Him and fearing Him reverently, He has established me, and He is cognisant of my gratefulness.  Again, it is not merely by my power alone, for I have had to come to Him in prayer multiple times to find strength that I could only find in Him.  The glory and the credit all go to God.