There is a difference between what you believe is possible and what God knows you are capable of. There is a dynamic tension between who you are and who you can be. There is a stretch between your subjective view and the actual objective reality. There is a potential waiting to be fulfilled when you step beyond your own best and pursue God’s best for you.
Maybe you have been sitting in the middle of the pack, avoiding the layoff crowd but never achieving top numbers. Maybe you have tried the latest fad diet only to discover that the weight all comes back when you go back to your normal eating habits. Maybe you have been putting off your dreams of starting a business, finding a lasting relationship, quitting smoking, or meeting your fitness goals.
Whatever your situation, whatever your goals, whatever your dreams, whatever your challenges — there is what you see, what you believe, and what you propose, and then there is what God sees, what God believes, and what God proposes.
You may feel that you have already stretched as far as you are capable of stretching, gone as far as you are capable of going, or achieved everything that you can imagine accomplishing. You may have reached the limits of your ingenuity, discovered the boundaries of your knowledge, pressed yourself to the limits of your skills, and tested the reaches of your stamina. And yet, God is suggesting that if you are not receiving everything that He has promised that there is a yet to be discovered path for you to find the life that He has in store.
You are capable of more than you know, gifted with more than you have accepted, and promised more than you have ever believed possible.
You were chosen before you were born. You were designed with intent and purpose. You were created unique and gifted. You were developed specifically to receive the goodness of God in ever increasing measure.
You are capable of more than your best, you are capable of receiving God’s best for you.
Now, it’s an interesting fact that God’s best is a moving target. Once you receive God’s best it immediately moves higher, deeper, and better than it was before. More than just a single accomplishment or arriving at a specific outcome, God’s best provides a path and process, a life and an experience of ever increasing blessing, strength, health, wholeness, success, peace, and joy.
God’s best is not an endpoint, it is a trajectory.
Far from being the kind of “rest in peace” conclusion that so many believe is the ultimate goal, God’s best is discovering a consistent and perpetual rate of change, improvement, and achievement — finding your stride and receiving from everything that God has to offer in bigger and better ways every day starting today, and extending into eternity.
Optimizing your life requires the realization that change is essential to life. The goal of life is not to achieve a static position, a fixed outcome, or the ability to come to a stop and finally give up. On the contrary, life is the opportunity to grow, to develop, to rise, to accomplish, to invest, to invent, to contribute, to offer, to reach, to aspire, to achieve, to receive, to succeed, and so much more. And embedded in every success in the seed of an even greater accomplishment. Hidden within every skill is the opportunity for greater perfection. Woven into the fabric of every relationship is the potential for greater intimacy, greater investment, greater connection, and greater love.
No matter how much you have received there is more awaiting you.
No matter how much you have accomplished your potential expands before you.
No matter how much you have lived eternity opens an ever greater path in front of you.
God’s best for you is a perpetually unfolding revelation of increase, a continuously accelerating outpouring of blessing, and an ever expanding flood of abundance.
But if you choose only to pursue a single endpoint, to receive a specific measure, to achieve a particular outcome, or in some other way to limit the eternal outpouring of God’s favor into a finite and limited vision of what is possible, than the greater blessings, the greater promises, and the greater life that God has in store will pass you by.
It’s like the time when Jesus had been walking for some time and was tired when He came upon a well. Now, the well was deep and had no rope or bucket for drawing water and so Jesus sat down to wait for a local to show up with something to draw water. And sure enough a woman soon arrived with a rope and a bucket, and as she was drawing water from the well Jesus asked her for a drink.
“Jesus said to her, ‘Please give me a drink.’ … The woman was surprised, for Jews refuse to have anything to do with Samaritans. She said to Jesus, ‘You are a Jew, and I am a Samaritan woman. Why are you asking me for a drink?’ Jesus replied, ‘If you only knew the gift God has for you and who you are speaking to, you would ask me, and I would give you running water.’ ‘But sir, you don’t have a rope or a bucket,’ she said, ‘and this well is very deep. Where would you get this running water? And besides, do you think you’re greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us this well? How can you offer better water than he and his sons and his animals enjoyed?’ Jesus replied, ‘Anyone who drinks this water will soon become thirsty again. But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.’ ‘Please, sir,’ the woman said, ‘give me this water! Then I’ll never be thirsty again, and I won’t have to come here to get water.'” – John 4
Jesus starts with a simple expansion on what the woman believed was possible, offering to replace the well with running water. The woman couldn’t see how this was possible, seeing as in order to achieve running water Jesus would need to create some sort of pumping mechanism to automate drawing water from the well. And so Jesus pushes her awareness of what is possible even further, offering that not only can He bring her running water, but the actual quality of the water that He is capable of offering is such that those who drink it will never have to drink again because His water creates a spring of running water that will last forever inside of them.
No matter what your expectations, beliefs, or dreams are today, God’s best is better, deeper, richer, fuller, and more in every way than you have yet imagined.
Pursuing God’s best is accepting that there is always more, always greater abundance, always better answers, always fuller peace, always increasing blessings, always improving opportunities, always overflowing joy and fulfillment, accomplishment and success, health and well being, love and relationship, grace and insight, life and eternity.
So the next time you think that you have reached your limits, the next time you believe you’ve found as far as you can go, the next time you can’t see a path forward — ask yourself if you are coming back to the same well again, rather than believing in God for running water. And if you think you have started receiving the running water that God is offering then ask yourself if you are open to discovering the water that will become an eternal wellspring of life within you.
God is infinite. God always has more to offer. God’s best for you is a path, a process, and a life of ever increasing abundance and blessing. All you have to do is embrace the change, the improvement, and the elevation that God has promised, and He is going to take you places beyond your biggest and best dreams.
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