Measure of Success

So we poured all our blood sweat and tears into our first show and had not nearly as many people as we'd hoped show up. And its pretty easy to get discouraged after something like that. Brent and I stopped and talked about it some, and its something you have to choose to do or not do -- choose to eat from the tree of life or from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

When we try to measure things and their success by our own knowledge and our own ability to see and comprehend, we just screw things up. Sure, it may not look like we made any progress, we certainly didn't make any money, but is that what God was trying to achieve? Or was He doing something bigger and greater than my finances?

A few details about the show:
1) Before our first performance, the cast stood in the alley and prayed together. As a cast, our beliefs varied a bit, but when Brent and I asked if anyone wanted to come pray with us, everyone came (except Abigail who was manning the front doors).
2) Although not many people physically came to the show, there was alot of support from the community, and alot of contacts were made. People who want to help on the next show, and in anything we do in the future. Writers, crew, directors - people we need to have a successful company.
3) Collectively, as a cast, we agreed that the show had alot standing against it in spiritual realms. We had attack after attack -- having to re-cast 2 major roles 4 weeks from curtain, having difficulty learning lines, stress, sickness, exhaustion, extra work at our jobs, the sudden death of a close friend, etc etc etc. It was terribly discouraging to sit backstage and see only a handful of folks in the audience. But we got out there and gave a fantastic show anyway.

Looking at it all like this helps me understand that God MUST be doing something greater here than we can see. There's no way that Satan would go through all that nonsense if God wasn't planning something big. So this weekend may not have been a success monetarily, but we know that there was a great spiritual breaking in the process of the weekend. And there's no way God would've given us all the help He did if He wasn't fighting for it too.

Eating from the Tree of Life is acknowledging God is doing something bigger than you. It's hard to look at it this way, for sure, but if you can adjust your mindset just a bit, great things are happening under the surface.