Westside Story Newspaper – Online The News of The Empire – Sharing the Quest for Excellence
Lou Coleman
By Lou Coleman
Settling for “good enough” instead of for God’s best. What’s wrong with you? You got to know that sometimes ‘good enough’ just ain’t good enough. There are sometimes and some situations when you should demand excellence and perfection. Considering all that God has done for you, in giving you life, creation, salvation, and forgiveness, “good enough” just doesn’t seem appropriate. God gave you His best: His only begotten Son to die on the cross for you, so why would you settle for “good enough?”
I tell you the Lord really impressed on me that the main reason we aren’t receiving His best is because we are willing to settle for less. Very few are committed to God’s best. Why? We have been influenced more by the world than by God and because of it Malcolm X said, “We’ve been bamboozled, hoodwinked, led astray.” Accepting far less than what God has provided. Slap yourself! The problem is you ain’t sick and tired of being sick and tired. Because when you sick and tired of being sick and tired you will aggressively pursue God’s best. You will have a holy dissatisfaction with mediocrity so you can experience all that God has for you. But I tell you, if you don’t pursue it, you won’t get it because it doesn’t happen accidentally or automatically. You have to reach a point where you won’t live with anything less than God’s best; an attitude that is missing in the lives of far too many Christians. The bar of expectations, even within the church, has been lowered. There is such a fear that someone might be disappointed and, therefore, condemned that many ministers have been teaching people to settle for less and avoid the disappointment. But I tell you, as Christians we ought to be walking in supernatural healing. We ought to be walking in financial prosperity. But most of us, however, are just as sick and broke as our unsaved neighbors. You will never receive God’s best until you become completely dissatisfied with second best—mediocrity. You may not initially consider it second best; but as time goes by you will begin to realize the blessings you threw away, and you will live with regret and inner turmoil. It has been said the minute you settle for less, you get even less than you settled for. Do not settle for a submission that has exceptions and a consecration that has holes in it.
Know that one of these days, you are going to stand before God. And when you do, you will know all things even as you are known [1 Cor. 13:12]. In an instant, you are going to know what you could have had while on this earth. You will understand that the same power that raised Christ from the dead was resident within you all along [Eph. 1:18-2]). You will discover that you didn’t have to be sick, that you didn’t have to live broke, and that you didn’t have to be depressed and discouraged. You will realize that love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance were living inside you the whole time [Gal. 5:22-23]. What you settling for less for? Good enough ain’t good enough!
