Looking Good
Monday July 7, 2014
For the Kingdom of God is not a matter of what we eat or drink, but of living a life of goodness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. (Romans 14:17 NLT)
God is good and He created humans in His image. When God created humans He also gave us the quality of choice. God’s desire is that we choose to do what is right and good and follow His ways. However, we also have the choice to do what is not good for us and follow after our own ways. Some of us, for a period of time, have chosen to follow the latter route, knowing in our hearts, that the choices we were making were not good for us. At those times we gave little thought to being right or wrong or whether we looked good or not. At other times we made efforts to clean up, change our life for the better, and do what we knew to be right and good. However, no matter how hard we may have tried to do the right thing, we fell back into our old ways. The truth is that only God is able to make us stand and not stumble, to be good rather than just appear respectable.
They will come with weeping; they will pray as I bring them back. I will lead them beside streams of water on a level path where they will not stumble. (Jeremiah 31:9a NIV)
Even though we try to deceive them, people around us are more aware than we realize, that what we appear to be is not who we are. We may be able to fool some of the people all of the time, or all of the people some of the time, but we can never fool all of the people all of the time. Sooner or later, we will come to that place where we will have to admit the truth to others and even to ourselves – the truth that we are not automatically good. Worse, in our fallen human state, we are incapable of goodness. The Bible tells us very clearly how God views the state of human kind.
Indeed, there is no one on earth who is righteous, no one who does what is right and never sins. (Ecclesiastes 7:20 NIV)
We may try to impress others in whatever we are doing or saying but without seeking God for guidance, we are simply puffing ourselves up to look good to those around us.
Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. (James 1:22 NIV)
Today, let’s ask God to change us on the inside so that we are trustworthy in all that we do and say.
Audio for Looking Good
Recent Meditations
Giving Hope
Partners in Hope is supported wholly by our friends and community. We are thankful to everyone who partners with us to help bring hope to the discouraged, hurting, and hopeless.