Goodness
Never underestimate the power of repentance. God desires to love us and expects us to respond to His love. We dream to be loved like Paul describes love to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 13. But let’s put the focus on learning to love others first. Relationships are a two-way street. You have to put in the effort for it to work. You can try as hard as you can to love someone, but our selfishness always comes out one way or the other. God instructs us how to achieve the pure and self-giving type of love described to the Corinthian church. Peter provides us with a pathway to achieve it and we will explore this later in this article. The first step of faith is to believe that what God says is true. The second step is goodness. In this aspect, goodness is not only about being good to others but goodness also represents excellence.
Derek Prince puts it this way: “when you become a Christian, you should be a better spouse, mother, worker, minister etc. “
We are not doing it for ourselves anymore, but we are doing it all for the Lord. So we must make more effort for our Creator, Lord and Saviour with the intentional sacrificial type of love described in 1 Corinthians 13.
But sometimes as Christians, we forget that we have to work hard, and instead, we do things half-heartedly, thinking that God will make up for the other half. We might not put much care into ourselves, our families, our work and our serving simply because we feel there is no need to do it. Why try so hard if God can come to the rescue? And then we are surprised at our lack of faith when our families go through hardships, or we do not get promoted at work, or don’t see fruit in ministries. God established laws on Earth, and one of them, as we know from the scriptures, is if you are faithful in little, you can be entrusted with much more, but if you are not giving your 100% in little, how can God entrust you with more? It would be unwise to give an unfaithful person greater levels of responsibility for worldly things, never mind divine plans!
Don’t get me wrong, we are to rely on God in challenging circumstances, but God will not do something for us that we can do ourselves. He will come in when we cannot do it alone and help us. Thus, we are to rely on God in all things, but we are to play our part as much as possible.
2 Peter 1:4-8, NASB
4 Through these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world on account of lust. 5 Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, 6 and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, 7 and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love. 8 For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they do not make you useless nor unproductive in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
This scripture highlights that excellence is the first thing after faith that we require in order to move anywhere close to self-control and love. We often hear about how we should love others, but if we have not mastered goodness in this way, how can we hope to master self-control and love? We require it all as it says these are the keys to a good life God wants us to have, but it is up to us to do it.
Excellence is what we should strive for. God is the God of excellence. Everything is designed perfectly without blemish, of course, until humans come in and ruin many things. We should strive for goodness which is excellence in God’s sight. We can make excuses for never being perfect, but we should strive for excellence. It has to radiate in all aspects of our lives. In our serving, in our workplaces, in our daily lives and in the way we present ourselves.
We have all heard ‘work as if you work for the Lord’ (Colossians 3:23). This is applicable to work and ministry work. We should know what it is supposed to look like. And we should strive to achieve it consistently. Consistently being on time, respecting others, doing your work diligently, doing the daily work we get paid to do, and serving in a ministry. Nowadays, people work well at their jobs because they are paid to do it. But when it comes to ministry, you would hardly call that working, and people are always late and lazy and doing anything extra is impossible. Almost as if people leave all of their energy and will at work, and when it comes down to serving, they have no motivation. But for God, it is all important, especially the work that is going on in His house.
I pray the Lord pardons us, provided we turn to Him and forsake our wicked ways.
