I talked to a man, a multimillionaire, whose business employs over 35,000 people.  He has a full-time captain for his yacht.  He has all the toys and pleasures and success that life can offer.  Yet his life has been marked by emptiness and a lack of enjoyment.

In our counseling, he told me, "I struggle constantly with low self-esteem.  Everything I do, everything I accomplish, is to impress my father.  When I was little, he told me, 'You'll never amount to anything.'"

I have a letter from that man telling me how he sat in a motel room with a loaded nine millimeter handgun in his mouth, ready to end his life because of the emptinesws and despair he felt.  He said, "I made a million dol.lars many times over, but I lost something more precious than gold--the love of my youth and my family."

The problem was, his father, who had been dead for years, had never told his son that he loved him or approved of him.  There's no way to change the mind of a dead person.  No matter how much you accomplish, you can never get love from somebody who is gone.

This man thought if he got the next promotion, the next recognition, the next raise, then he would be acceptable.  He kept htinking that one more success would convince his father that he was really worthwhile.  But he never got the peace he was seeking.

The intense drive to succeed is a losing battle.  No success level or accomplishment will satisfy insecurity, because the problem is not a lack of success.  Only God can fill the void by offering us His perfect acceptance and love.