Good Enough

If you have been around me for any length of time, you've probably heard the words "it's good enough" come out of my mouth. Sometimes (okay, so a lot of the time) the fruit of patience takes longer to ripen on the tree called my life. In those moments of impatience and when it comes to just about anything artistic, those three words will slip out of my mouth: 

It's good enough. 

A couple of years ago, I had a faithful friend encourage me that, just maybe, those words should not come out of a believer's mouth. I think she was right. After all, Colossians 3 tells us that we are to do everything heartily as unto the Lord. I Corinthians 10:31 says that in whatever we do, we are to do it to the glory of God. It would be very awkward to look Jesus in the face and say, "Well, I figured it was good enough." 

As I continue to read through 1 Thessalonians, chapter four has a three word replacement that I pray will help slow me down and spur me on. It's the phrase "more and more."

"Finally, then brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more." I Thess. 4:1

"Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, for that is indeed what you are doing to all the brothers...but we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more." I Thess. 4:9-10

There is no settling in the Christian life. There is resting in the promises and character of God, for sure, but we should not be those who settle for less, for good enough. As believers, we should be known as those who reach forward, pursue the goal, run with endurance, keep our eyes on Jesus, be holy as He is holy, toil with all Christ's energy that He works in us...never forgetting that it is God who is working in us enabling us to will and to act for His good purpose (Phil. 2:13). 

More and more. 

It's what the Christian life is all about. It's what our pursuit should be, in all things, until the day when our faith is turned into sight and Christ "transforms the body of our humble condition into the likeness of His glorious body" (Phil 3:21) and our sinful moments of good enough and our striving, in the Spirit, to be more and more like Him gives way to sweet perfection...to an inheritance that is imperishable and undefiled. 

I'm so thankful our Lord did not settle for "good enough" but gave Himself up completely, once for all, to reconcile us to God (Hebrews 10:10). And I am so thankful that His sacrifice has given us eternal life where we will spend eternity in a whole new kind of "more and more". John Piper puts it this way

"We will constantly be more amazed with God, more in love with God, and thus ever more relishing his presence and our relationship with him. Our experience of God will never reach it consummation. We will never finally arrive, as if upon reaching a peak we discover there is nothing beyond. Our experience of God will never become stale. It will deepen and develop, intensify and amplify, unfold and increase, broaden and balloon. Our relishing and rejoicing in God will sharpen and spread and extend and progress and mature and flower and blossom and widen and stretch and swell and snowball and inflate and lengthen and augment and advance and proliferate and accumulate and accelerate and multiply and heighten and reach a crescendo that will even then be only the beginning of an eternity of new and fresh insights into the majesty of who God is!"

May our "good enough" give way to "more and more"...for all of eternity! 


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