Your Best Is Good Enough

We talk a lot in church about how, as Christians, we need to love God and serve God and follow God.  But what does that really mean?  What does that look like in your life or in my life?

Here’s what I think.  I think God deserves our absolute best.  The Old Testament talks a lot about how God was to get the “first fruits” of people’s labor.  The first crops that were raised.  The first born of the animals.  God is deserves our first and our best, and God has every right to expect our first and our best.  No less.  But--and here’s the point--also no more.

What I mean is that sometimes we feel like our best is not very good.  We feel like we don’t know what to do.  We feel like we don’t know what we are doing.  We feel like we’ve messed up, like we’ve made all kinds of mistakes, like we’ve just totally fouled things up.  And sometimes, too, we feel like no matter what we do, it’s never enough.  It’s never right, it’s never good enough, it’s never what it should be.  Sometimes we feel like we’re just not capable of doing things right.  And it makes us feel unworthy, as if we really have nothing to offer God.

But God understands.  God understands our limitations and our faults and our failures.  God understands them better than we do, because God created us.  God does not ask us to do things perfectly--God knows perfection is beyond us.  God just asks us to do our best.

Think of those “first fruits” from the Old Testament.  There must have been times when the first crops that were raised were not very good at all.  After all, they had droughts and storms and all that kind of stuff back then, too.  There must have been times when the people of Israel looked at their first fruits, the first crops that were raised, and thought, “Am I really supposed to offer this to God?  It’s not good enough!”

But if it was their best, it was good enough.  Even if it was not very good, it was good enough if it was the best they could do.

And that’s true for you and me, too.  If we’ve done our best, that’s all we have to do.  Do our best to serve God.  Do our best to follow God.  Do our best to show love to God.  There will be times when our best is not very good.  But if it’s truly our best, it will be acceptable to God.  In fact, it will be more than acceptable.  God will honor and cherish what we do, and God will bless what we do, as long as it’s our best.

Look at it this way.  Have you ever had a little kid give you a picture they’d made?  Was it really good?  Maybe, but I’m guessing it probably was not, at least not objectively.  But if that kid was you child, or grandchild, or great-grandchild, you would not have traded that picture for an original of the Mona Lisa.  It was something that someone you loved made for you, and that made it worth everything, even if someone who didn’t know you would’ve said it was worth nothing.

That’s how God looks at us.  If we give our best to God, it’s worth everything to God, even if someone else might think it’s worth nothing.  Because that’s how much God loves us.

So give God your best.  Make it truly your best.  But as long as it is your best, don’t worry about whether it’s good enough.  It is.  Because God loves us that much.