What is “Post-COVID-19” Success? By Debra Moore

Our guest blogger today is Debra Moore. Debra is a loving Christian wife and mother of three wonderful adult children and one spoiled grand dog named DJ. She is a 25-year church volunteer in various ministries including the mental health ministry where she’s been an instructor and facilitator for the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Mental Health training and family education is her passion and because of that, she has been interviewed about the subject on both television and radio.. Debra’s heart for the mentally ill comes from having had a mother with mental health difficulties. She serves her DFW Community in honor of her mother and those who suffer from mental health difficulties.

After praying many years for “perissos” blessings which are more than enough or more than anticipated, the Lord has brought us to this new perspective:

“Success is not about personal accomplishments or material possessions.”

We heard George Barna discuss success on the radio during the Covid-19 epidemic. Barna’s definition of success is as follows: 

Working toward spiritual growth

Sacrifice, Servanthood

Being absolutely committed to the Christian faith

Attending worship service

Allowing our faith to help us process international disasters

Being people of faith with the reality of having an intimate, growing relationship with Jesus Christ.

Surprisingly, there was no mention of intellectual, financial, educational, professional development or physical appearance factors in the article. According to Mr. Barna, my husband and I are successful! However, up until now we have felt like failures. Financial or professional success has often been temporal or elusive. For many years before we met, and after losing both our first spouses, relational failure seemed our norm.

With the destruction of the nation’s economies due to Covid-19, success cannot be defined as being financially wealthy anymore. God was clear when economies around the globe stopped producing instantaneously. Each of the markets that ran our pre-Covid economic successes crashed. The markets were left barely breathing, face down on the floor of global economic failure. Our barest existence as humanity came down to all the toilet paper, sanitizer, Lysol spray, face masks and gloves we could hoard. 

Which leads us to the next definition of worldly success—our appearance. Did Covid-19 discriminate because of appearance? Both the gorgeous and the glum were affected. If our money and our good looks are not going to make us successfully impervious to disaster and pandemic, maybe it is time to reassess our own definitions of life success. As we peered out over our protective face masks and felt our warm breath fog up our lenses, we reached out our blue-gloved hands for our Bibles.

Let’s say that each morning we read verses or have a prayer time? What would happen if we got time in with God before the electronic hum of negativity took over? What if we asked God to forgive us of our sins and the sins of our nations? We could thank and praise God for who He is and what He has done for us. We could pray prayers of thanks for shelters in place, clothing, food, peace and security which are all promises of God to us. We could pray for our church and pastors, for our nation and national leaders. We could pray for our characters and hearts to be changed. 

We could lean into this new perspective of spiritual accomplishment and share any material possessions we may have with others. All the while openly smiling at ourselves and the sweet spiritual success of Christ living in us. Here’s to having an infectious and true relationship with the living God where there is eternal success. It’s truly more than enough.

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We hope you will join us for our next POP Chat, July 29th on ZOOM at 6:30 p.m.. Dr. Lynnette Simm will be teaching about “How to Have Your Peace” and Renee Rollins will lead our worship for this beautiful one-hour of fellowship. Here’s the link to sign up: https://share.hsforms.com/15bHBupdrTBugXxD9Y8Q_MQ3jo4z