My son just started his last year of high school. A few nights ago at the dinner table our family talked again about his future and continuing his education after high school. He’ll need to make some decisions soon about what he might want to pursue for a career and where he might get trained for that. Many of his friends who are high school seniors and their families are also making these decisions. Since this impacts the rest of a student’s life, no one wants to make a poor choice or miss an opportunity. Admittedly, there is an unspoken social pressure to figure everything out, attend the best school, work hard, and become successful in a career in order to be fulfilled, happy, comfortable, and secure. Perhaps you feel that pressure also. Maybe you are unsure about the future and need wisdom in making decisions. If so, I have good news. You don’t have to figure this out on your own. Ask God for help. Trust him and follow his lead. Then no matter what direction you end up going, it will be the right one, because you will be putting God first. Every other decision, relationship, and pursuit will align in proper position behind God when you put him at the head. You will miss nothing of significance and you’ll gain everything of importance.
Your Good Is Not Enough
Wanting a “good” life and pursuing that with wise decisions and hard work is sensible. However, there is a fundamental flaw with the premise that external achievement will produce internal fulfillment. It may motivate or satisfy you for a time, but not deeply and completely. Just as dew can never quench the thirst of a tree like an aquifer can. That’s because you have a core problem as every person does. Sadly, by default people put themselves first before God and others. For a season this prideful, self-centered waywardness can be pleasurable. But it separates you from God and others, and it kills you spiritually. Until that is dealt with internally, nothing externally will save you nor provide the true life you thirst for.
Doing the “right” things, attending the “right” school, working the “right” career, walking the “right” path, knowing the “right” people cannot gain you real life. It cannot make you right with God, who is the source of true life. Many religious leaders of Jesus’ day worked to gain a good life. They did the right things, but they missed the right life. They pleased themselves, but they didn’t please God. They sought the praise of people, but they didn’t serve people. They proclaimed the truth, but they didn’t live the truth. They knew about God, but they didn’t know God. Jesus rebuked them for it, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness” (Matthew 23:25-28).
Resist hypocrisy and wickedness by surrendering yourself to God by faith instead of trying to fulfill yourself. You are created by God with a body, a soul (mind, emotions, personality, will) and a spirit. God designed you to be with him, to be like him, and to do what he does. He is the source of all that is good, right, and loving. Apart from him you will get a glimpse of these divine blessings because his glorious nature permeates all of creation around us. However, you can never experience God’s abundant life, truly know him, be healed of your brokenness, be saved from the deadly results of your sin, be adopted as his child, or be united as one with him until you give up trying to achieve what’s good, right, and loving on your own and receive them as a gifts from him by faith. That’s why Jesus, God the Son, came to earth. He took on flesh and lived righteously among us. He paid the death penalty for our sin and rose again to give us victory over living for ourselves. Anyone who trusts in his righteousness rather than their own can become a child of God and experience his good, abundant, everlasting life (John 3:16-21).
God freely offers unimaginable blessing to anyone who, by believing in Jesus, moves from pleasing themselves first to pleasing God first. The apostle Paul wrote to believers who used to be unbelievers, “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them [unbelievers] at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:1-7).
God Is Enough
Don’t fall for the ancient lie that God is not enough—that if you follow him, you will miss something better (Romans 1:18-2:16). Satan didn’t believe God was enough. He desired to be God himself and it led to his downfall and will be the cause of his demise (Isaiah 14:12-15; Ezekiel 28:11-19; Luke 10:18; Revelation 12:8, 20:7-15). Then he deceived Adam and Eve and the human race with this destructive lie—God is not good enough to satisfy you, God is not involved enough to notice you, God is not loving enough to accept you, God is not caring enough to provide for you, God is not strong enough to save you (Genesis 3:1-24). The glorious truth is that God is more than enough and nothing in this world compares to his surpassing greatness (Isaiah 46:5; Psalm 40:5). With him you have everything worthwhile; without him you have nothing that can truly save or satisfy you.
Learn from Jesus who resisted the temptation of Satan to pursue his own good life by humbly obeying and relying on God the Father to provide an even better life for him (Luke 4:1-13). Jesus taught this approach,
- “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self?” (Luke 9:23-25).
- “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself” (Matthew 6:29-34).
- “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:19-21).
Conclusion
Don’t settle to just seek a good life. Go for the best life with God. During seasons of uncertainty or difficulty, as well as, blessing know that God is enough. God has much grander plans for you than anything you can achieve on your own, just as he did with the shepherd David whom he made into a king. Trust God and he will train you and transform you to become like Jesus. Follow him and you will miss nothing worthwhile. When David was a fugitive from King Saul he wrote, “Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him. Fear [honor and revere] the Lord, you his holy people, for those who fear him lack nothing” (Psalm 34:8,9). This is a comforting truth that David experienced in all seasons of his life and you can too. In Psalm 23 David wrote, “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever” (Psalm 23:1-6). God sees you, accepts you, values you, and loves you. Nothing is lost and everything is gained by putting your faith in his perfect love. Soon Jesus will return to reward believers and judge unbelievers. Join him by trusting in him and you’ll miss nothing now nor forever.