So, are you looking for success? Are you trying to take your life to a good place?

If you want to build personal success, there is one thing that you really need. You need at least one enemy.

One of the strangest truths that I have learned is that successful people always have enemies. Someone works against them, and opposes them and that is important to their success.

This opposition produces several results: 

1. The enemies make us stronger and more persistent, unless we give up and quit. Life is a struggle, and they teach us how to struggle forward. 
2. The enemies talk about us and make us famous. There is an old political quote: “Say anything you want about me, but please say something.” 
3. Opposition can teach us to search for friends and allies, to build a team of supporters. There is another old saying “You go as far as your team will take you.”

Here is an example of this: There is a Christian musician from the United States who is touring Canada doing public concerts. His name is Sean Feucht and he has met some serious opposition.

Apparently many of his concerts have been shut down, even though they are free, and Canada has rules about freedom of expression, like most democratic countries. 

I don’t know much about this concert tour in Canada, and probably most people in Canada knew little or nothing … except for those enemies.

The people who oppose Sean Feucht have made him famous, and he is probably more successful now, than he would have been without opposition. 

Now, he is in the news, and he is finding ways to offer concerts at private sites, when public sites are closed to him. If you want to know more, here is a sample of the Canadian news, making this man more successful and famous:

READ: MAGA-affiliated musician waiting on permit for Winnipeg show

This is interesting to me, because Christianity started with a carpenter in a small town, in a small province, in the great Roman Empire. When He preached and taught, He was arrested, by his enemies, given a false kangaroo trial, and executed painfully and publicly, on a cross. He had a few followers who persisted, after he was gone, and they were also persecuted and abused. 

The result is startling. In the year 312, about three centuries after Jesus, there were so many Christians, that the Emperor Constantine used the Christian cross symbol to inspire his army in a civil war.

His motto was “In hoc signo vinces.” The translation from Latin is “In this sign you will conquer.” My translation is, “If you can’t beat them, join them.”

Constantine’s army won the battle and the war, and Christianity became the official religion of the entire empire. 

I will skip over many centuries of history, except to say that many Christians suffered, from the actions of the opposers. Today, about 2.4 billion people identify as Christians, followers of that carpenter from a small town.

Of course, there are many reasons for this success story, and many of those who claim the identity are not known for their sincere personal convictions, but opposition from enemies is an important source of success for Christians. 

Remember that when trouble comes into your life. Maybe God is doing something good for you.

That is all strange, but true.

And then we have the nation of Israel. In the earliest history, in the Bible, a man named Abram lived in a city named Ur, in a region named Chaldea. 

Can you find those places on the map? 

Probably Abram was only known to a few neighbors and friends, in that obscure place. Abram claimed that God spoke to him, and told him to move to a region far away. The name “Abram” was also changed to one we know better “Abraham.”

The words in the Bible are: 

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12: 1 to 3)

The nation that traces itself back to Abram in the city of Ur, is Israel. That nation ended, about two thousand years ago, but the Jewish people persisted in some places.

About a hundred years ago, a few Jewish people had the strange idea that they could restore the ancient nation, in the ancient homeland. Did you know that some British leaders proposed creating a Jewish homeland in Uganda, in Africa? The possibility of a Jewish nation of Israel, in the Middle East, was an impossible dream.

And then the enemies of the Jews tried to exterminate them all. You know I’m talking about Hitler and the Nazis. They did terrible things to the Jewish people, but some survived.

After World War Two, there was sympathy for the surviving Jews, and a new organization, the United Nations, approved the founding of their new nation, in the old region that was promised to Abram.

What follows is modern history. If you follow any news feed now, you will almost certainly find some mention of this impossible little nation, and stories about protests and opposition. It’s as if we should read the news about opposition and protests differently, and there is a God who is acting in human history.

Recently, in an almost unknown athletic event, the opposition turned their backs, and their wheelchairs, to the flag of Israel, when the national anthem of that nation was played.

You might have missed this obscure news story, but the opposition continues:  

READ: Fury as British Paralympians turn backs during Israeli national anthem

So, the Bible story continues.

As a Christian, I believe we can see the work of God, in our world, in the opposition, and we can know that something amazing is coming on us. 

I hope we can all learn that lesson. It’s not all about the good times: 

We also rejoice in sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance, character, and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. (Romans 5: 3, 4, and 5)