How Does God’s Best Look Like

How does God’s best look like? What is God’s best for our lives?

As believers, we want to have God’s best in our lives. We want to have His best will, plans, blessings, and everything He has for us, and we pray for His best.

We trust that God always chooses the best for us and in every situation. As followers of Christ, we believe He gives us the best in His infinite love and wisdom.

However, often we fail to recognize and accept His best for what it is. This is logical and to be anticipated. Many times, His best is the most difficult, the slowest, the most challenging, and complex.

It is not the shortcut we have expected; it is not the instant relief we have craved. God’s best challenges and stretches us. Often, His best leads us through deserts, unimaginable losses, and pain. But it is still His best. 

God's best often leads us through deserts, unimaginable losses, and pain, but it is still His best.  #hope #spiritualgrowth #trustGod Share on X

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Here is Why God’s Best Is Not Our Best

If we have followed the Lord for a certain time, we have already experienced this profound truth: His definition of good is not ours, and His best is not our best. Yes, there are cases where we agree with Him on this, but more often we don’t.

Here is the reason:

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.”As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9, NIV)

God is God. He and the things He does are way beyond our capacity for knowledge and understanding. We can’t place Him in a box and treat Him like the genie in the bottle. No, it will not work this way. 

Not understanding doesn’t mean we can’t trust Him. On the contrary, we are called to live by faith, not by sight. We can always trust His perfect will for us.

How Does God’s Best Look Like

God’s best will and plans for our lives may look perplexing and frustrating. They may look slow, challenging, and full of obstacles and opposition.

God’s best may include constant struggles, facing the impossible, feeling lonely, and overwhelmed, and passing through the valley of the shadow of death.

Why is this God’s best, and how can it be good for us and others in our lives?

There is a lot hidden in God’s mysterious ways that will not be revealed until eternity, but there are several truths God has revealed about His purposes now. 

One of the most important purposes of God’s work in our lives is to help us change in the image of Christ. This includes enlarging our capacity to know God and love Him as He really is (not our beliefs and imagination about Him).

Change and growth involve pain. Maturity means that we lose our illusions and we gain reality. And we all know how painful disillusionment is.

God’s best is not temporal. It reaches into eternity and prepares us for partaking in His glory. This is the most glorious outcome we can ever imagine.

God’s best for our lives includes enlarging our capacity to know and love Him as He really is. #trustGod #spiritualgrowth  #growth Share on X

Examples of God’s Best in the Bible

Here are several examples from the Bible about how God’s best looked in the lives of God’s beloved.

Jesus: God’s Best in His Life

From the earthly, temporal point of view, God’s best plan for Jesus’ life involved a short, ordinary life, facing betrayal, rejection, severe temptations, and being murdered by hanging on a cross.

From an eternal, heavenly perspective, God’s best plan for Jesus meant setting in motion the greatest redemption and salvation plan in human history.

It meant making a way for millions of souls to have access to God. It meant victory over sin and death. This is mind-blowing!

God’s Best in the Life of Mary

Here is Mary, the mother of Jesus. From an earthly point of view, God’s best for her life looked like getting pregnant in an unexplainable way (a dangerous thing in the culture in which she lived), receiving visits from angels, the responsibility to raise God’s Son, and the agony of seeing her son brutally murdered.

From a heavenly perspective, God’s best for Mary included the highest honor and privilege to be the earthly mother of the Messiah, to care for Him, and to know Him as no other human being.

God’s Best in the Life of Stephen

God’s perfect plan and best will for the life of Stephen, “a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit”, (Acts 6:5) and “a man full of God’s grace and power” (Acts 6: 8) with “a face of an angel” (Acts 8:15), was to be stoned to death while preaching the Good News.

Couldn’t it be better to keep such a man alive? Surely, he could do so much for God’s kingdom.

God’s best was death (of a martyr and premature in our eyes). From an eternal perspective, Stephen’s death was a seed buried in the ground that led to an abundant harvest of a multitude of saved souls. 

How Does God’s Best Look in Your Life? 

There are many other examples in the Bible showing how God’s best differs from what we may think would be the best. We can also trace a common pattern.

Often, God’s best doesn’t make sense from a human standpoint. We are temporal beings, and we can’t see things outside our current time, nor can we comprehend the complexities of God’s creation, visible and invisible.

If God’s best makes no sense and doesn’t look like what you expected in your life, you are in good company! Remember that we don’t need to understand the plan to trust the Lord.

We don’t need to understand the plan to trust the Lord. #trustGod #faith #spiritualgrowth Share on X

Let’s Pray Together

Lord, humble us to trust You. Help us discern and accept Your best will and plan for our lives. We want to wait on You, discern, and submit to Your ways. Grow us in patience and perseverance, and lead us deep into Your love, preparing us for eternity. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Submitting to God’s Ways and Plan in Our Painful Experiences

If you want to learn more about how to draw near to God and submit to His ways and plans in our painful experiences, when life doesn’t make sense, my book, “Draw Near: How Painful Experiences Become the Birthplace of Blessings,” is for you.

Let me take you on a journey through 13 painful experiences, showing the losses and the precious blessings in each of them.

More Encouragement for You

If you need more resources, encouragement, and comfort when you go through pain, grief, and despair, I can highly recommend these books. Check them out.

Trusting God in All the Things: 90 Devotions for Finding Peace in Your Every Day by Karen Ehman and Ruth Schwenk

The Night Is Normal by Dr. Alicia Britt Chole

Make Up Your Mind: Unlock Your Thoughts, Transform Your Life by Denise Dubois Pass and Michelle Nietert

Life Can Be Good Again by Lisa Appelo

It’s Not Supposed to Be This Way by Lisa Terkeurst

Hope When Life Unravels: Finding God When It Hurts by Adam Dooley

Restoration Year – a 365-Day Devotional by John Eldredge

The Garden Within by Dr. Anita Phillips

Hope for the Hard Days by Sarah Geringer

Lean into Grace by Stacey Pardoe

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Your Turn

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