In the decade since I left home for college and a career, I have observed that my peers generally fall into one of two categories: those who are full of ambition, and those who lack the same. And as the years fly by, I see that with enough time and turmoil, those in the first category lapse into the latter.

After facing the winds of disappointment, it is easy for one to abandon all effort and enthusiasm and settle instead for a spirit of complacency.

Such an arc to one’s life is all too common, and it is all too tragic.

Yet by the same token, I offer a word of advice to those still burning with ambition: if you wish to live life to the fullest and taste the victory so many have forsaken, you must embrace the sweet death of ambition.

By this, I don’t mean that you should backslide into complacency. That is not the death of ambition, but the stifling of it. In complacency, ambition is as alive as an untamed lion kept locked in a cage.

The complacent man has either moved the goalposts of his ambition to declare himself a winner, or he has decided that the game is rigged against him and so sits down on the sidelines.

You know these people well: they are either content with what they have attained in life with zero aspirations to achieve anything else, or else they are discontent but believe that they simply cannot achieve anything more and thus do not try.

The sweet death of ambition is something else entirely. That is because this sweet death, like the sweet death of our Savior, has to it a resurrection. Ambition is reborn into something pure and holy, something that cannot be snuffed out by hardship. This new ambition produces a life of vigor and perseverance, a dogged determination to fight the fight and win the race.

How then shall I describe the sweet death of ambition and this new ambition that takes its place?

First, I must point out that this can only be had by the true Christian. If you are not a believer saved by the grace of Jesus Christ, then my advice will do you no good. To the unbeliever, this will seem nothing more than a delusion built on an incomprehensible paradox. But such is the way of God to bring wisdom out of folly, to bring strength out of weakness.

Now, to put ambition to death, you must nail it to the cross. Jesus put it like this to His disciples: “If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me.” (Matthew 16:24)

When I talk about the sweet death of ambition, I mean nothing less than a true surrender of yourself and all of your ambition to God. And to surrender your ambition to God, you must recognize what your ambition is. What is it that you are striving after? What do you wish to accomplish in life? You must examine yourself and pinpoint what exactly it is that is driving you. And pray that God would reveal all that is in your heart, lest it remain hidden.

It makes no difference why you have the ambitions that you do. Of course you should surrender every worldly reason for your ambition such as the desires for fame and honor or for wealth and pleasure. But the same submission applies for every godly ambition you have as well. You could simply want to love others well, make the most use of the gifts God has blessed you with, or pursue something because you thought God was calling you to it.

Honorable or dishonorable, you must bring your ambition before God and nail it to the cross. This is where you must pray with Christ, “yet not My will, but Yours be done.” (Luke 22:42)

Of course, surrender is all much easier said—or prayed—than done. I certainly can’t pretend that I have perfected the art of surrender. Yet I have learned that what I do not surrender, God will take for Himself.

Therefore, you must learn to be content with anything God brings to you or permits in your life. That is not to say that God wants to see you suffer. For “He does not afflict willingly or grieve the sons of mankind.” (Lamentations 3:33) But He will allow you to be tested and tried by the pains of the sinful world in which you live so that your suffering would produce endurance, and your endurance would produce character, and your character would produce hope, through which God is glorified. (Romans 5:3-5)

And thus you have the sweet death of ambition—it does not perish in the ashes of failure, but in the humble revelation that the throne it sought was an illusion all along.

When God awakens you to this reality, He will bring you to a place of contentment but not of complacency. For, as I said, the sweet death of ambition gives birth to a new ambition.

If surrender is the death of ambition, then following Christ is its rebirth. You must fix your eyes on Him and run after Him as the prize of life. He is your ambition. “To live is Christ.” (Philippians 1:21)

On a practical level, what this means is to faithfully serve Him with the lot in life He has given to you. You must devote yourself to God in prayer and the study of Scripture. You must engage with other believers to encourage them in the faith. You must examine your skills and circumstances, and constantly look for new ways that you might glorify God.

You must discipline your mind and body and emotions to honor Him. If you are a good steward of your mind, you will better serve God with your intellect and career. If you are a good steward of your body, you will be able to serve God longer without the hurdles of poor health. If you are a good steward of your emotions, you will be more inclined to submit to the temperament of the Holy Spirit than your own temper.

To follow God day by day, hour by hour, is the new ambition that is born through the crucifixion of the old. It is not glamorous, and it requires more grace from God than any strength you could muster on your own, but in the end, your life will be more fulfilling than had you reached every last one of your old ambitions.

Here, I’ll add that the pursuits of your old ambition may still be worth the chase. 

But you must exercise caution to remember that the victory is not in achieving these goals, but in glorifying God through the pursuit of these goals. It is good and well to say “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.” (James 4:15) But if you let your old ambition sneak back in and supplant the new ambition you have in Christ, it will lead to destruction. For either you will fail in your goal and once more shake your fist at God in disappointment, or you will succeed and find yourself proud or complacent, or you will have a rude awakening to the vanity of your pursuit.

However, if you remain steadfast in the new ambition of following Christ, you will be content regardless of the outcome of your pursuits.

And more than that, you can have confidence that God has equipped you to succeed in your new ambition, whether you see the fruit of it or not.

He has promised us this much, as “we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:10) And further, as Paul states, “He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 1:6)

When you take these promises to heart, you will find much rest and comfort in the knowledge that your striving is not in vain. Where your old ambition, that great conqueror of men, would leave you complacent or vanquished, your new ambition in Christ will be fully realized through His sovereign design.You only have but to trust and obey, knowing that the real prize awaits in eternity. And nothing under the sun can separate a believer from that. Having an assurance of things hoped for and a conviction of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1), you will have the faith to run with endurance the race set before you. (Hebrews 12:1)