From Good Things to Evil Things

It’s said that the enemy of the best is the good, or even the better. It’s easy to decide that something is good enough, even when it isn’t the best, when the price tag of “the best” is prohibitive. In a lot of circumstances, that’s absolutely true. If you’re looking to buy a computer, for example, You could spend a lot of money and get the very best, fastest, and newest computer out there, knowing that in six months it won’t be any of those things any more, or you could spend a lot less for the computer that was the very best six months ago. You may even find that the very best computer for your needs isn’t the fastest or newest anyway. If your main concern is doing word processing and a little web surfing, you don’t need the graphics capability and processor speed that someone would want for playing on-line video games 23/7.

Having said that, let me point out that God wants you to have the very best. Not necessarily the best and fastest computer, or the biggest and nicest house, or the prettiest and fastest car, because all of those things are temporal. Those things really don’t mean anything in the long run. God wants us to have the best and closest relationship with Him, He wants us to have inner peace in times of trouble, He wants us to know that we will spend eternity in a good place instead of a bad one. That’s the sort of “best” that God wants for us.

The other side of that, though, is that God wants our best. He doesn’t want us to just do good things, or even better things; He wants us to do our best. Don’t misunderstand me, our best is never good enough; that’s where grace comes in, but He does want our best. In 1 Samuel 13, King Saul is waging war against the Philistines, and the prophet Samuel was supposed to meet him, but Samuel didn’t show up within the time frame that Saul was expecting him. Saul was worried that the Philistines would attack before Samuel got there, so he offered up a sacrifice to God, to try to curry favor with the Almighty before the battle began. Obviously, Saul had some good thoughts: He didn’t want to go into battle without the Lord being on his side; He was willing to make a sacrifice to God (which puts him at least one step above a lot of people). Of course, the first concern is a little backwards; it isn’t a question of whether God is on our side, it’s a question of whether we are on God’s side. Realistically, though, Israel was God’s chosen people, God wanted the best for Israel, just as He wants the best for us, and that would only include being subjugated to the Philistines if Israel needed to be taught a lesson. As far as Saul wanting to make a sacrifice unto God, in this particular instance, that wasn’t his place. To the human mind, offering a sacrifice to God would seem to be a good thing to do, but, if it isn’t what God wanted, then it isn’t such a good thing. If Saul had simply trusted God to take care of His people, there would not have been a problem. Samuel arrived well before the battle actually started, and, even after Saul’s mistake, God delivered Israel from the Philistines, but God told Saul (through Samuel) that he would be removed from being king. If Saul had truly repented, and put forth a renewed effort to try to be the sort of man that God wanted him to be, who knows whether he might have been able to turn God, as the Ninevites did? Instead, if you continue reading, you find that Saul slowly fades from being a good king (although perhaps not the best king), to being a man that tries, not only to maintain his power, but to pass it on to his sons, as God works to take power from Saul, and give that power to someone who will give his best to God, and do his best for Israel.

We can get caught up in the same thing. We can try to do good things for God, and find that what we consider good things are not the things that God wants from us. When we find that we have misjudged what God expects of us, we can develop a bad attitude, as Saul did, or we can work to improve that relationship. Seek God, pray that He would help us to become what He called us to be, or backslide. There’s a reason that it is called “backsliding;” it is when one slides back to one’s old life, and that’s a slow process. It doesn’t happen overnight, and God will generally give one lots of chances to get right, but, the sooner one starts turning things around, the easier it is. If you are climbing a hill, and start sliding back down, the sooner you catch yourself and start back up the hill again, the easier it is, but, if one lets it get too far, eventually there is no stopping; spiritual backsliding is no different.