Yes, You Can Ministry

God’s Best for you!

“Psalm 84:1 How lovely are Your dwelling places, O LORD of hosts ! 2 My soul longed and even yearned for the courts of the LORD ; My heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God. 3 The bird also has found a house, And the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, Even Your altars, O LORD of hosts, My King and my God. 4 How blessed are those who dwell in Your house ! They are ever praising You. Selah. 5 How blessed is the man whose strength is in You, In whose heart are the highways to Zion! 6 Passing through the valley of Baca they make it a spring ; The early rain also covers it with blessings. 7 They go from strength to strength, Every one of them appears before God in Zion. 8 O LORD God of hosts, hear my prayer ; Give ear, O God of Jacob ! Selah. 9 Behold our shield, O God, And look upon the face of Your anointed. 10 For a day in Your courts is better than a thousand outside. I would rather stand at the threshold of the house of my God Than dwell in the tents of wickedness. 11 For the LORD God is a sun and shield ; The LORD gives grace and glory ; No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly. 12 O LORD of hosts, How blessed is the man who trusts in You!”

Yesterday morning my pastor preached on the subject, “Better is just better.” The entire time he was preaching the same thought kept running through my mind, “Good is always the enemy of God’s best”.
Many times in this we long for the “good life”, and there is nothing inherently wrong with that. However, God does not want, and Jesus did not die on the cross, or get resurrected from the grave by God to give us the “good life”. He wants us, and He offers us the “BEST LIFE”. (Please, don’t misunderstand the “BEST LIFE” that God offers is still filled with heat-aches, as we live in a fallen world, but the “BEST LIFE” that God offers will give us peace as we live in this world.)
When I think about the “BEST LIFE” that is offered by God, and the millions of people who have found this life offered by God several names come to my mind. Names like the Apostle Paul, Jim Elliot, Joni Eareckson Tada and many others.
The Apostle Paul was beaten, stoned, imprisoned, just about anything that you can imagine happened to him. Looked at from the outside his life seems like a perfect example of Murphy’s law, “Anything that can go wrong will.” But, in the middle of all the disaster and heart-ache that surrounded Paul he knew where the better life was found. The Apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Philippians, “Philippians 3:7 But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.8 More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ,”
Jim Elliot was sent by God to Ecuador to preach His gospel to the lost tribe of Auca Indians, and he would be killed by these same Indians. After his death Jim’s wife Elizabeth found his papers that he had written, and he scribbled down these simple, but profound words, “He is no fool who gives up what cannot save to gain what he cannot lose.”
Joni Eareckson Tada seemed to have life going her way. She had just graduated high school, and was preparing for college. In the summer of 1967 she was off with some friends relaxing, and goofing off on the Chesapeake Bay when she dove into shallow water and broke her neck. She instantly entered the world of paralysis. She was asked how she deals with her paralysis, and is still able to keep a positive attitude; her was again simple, yet profound, she said “I would rather be in this chair knowing God than walking around not knowing Him.”
There are millions of other people who know that the “Human” good life cannot compare to the Best life that God has already prepared for them!
“Jeremiah 29:11 ‘For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.”