WHAT IS GOOD?

What is GOOD? What is GOD? How do we discern the difference? Can something be "good" but not from God?

“No one is good but One, that is, God.” —MARK 10:18 

Everything in the universe is good to the degree it conforms to the nature of God and evil as it fails to do so. —A.W. TOZER

I was checking out some books by Lisa Bevere which led me to seeing books by her husband, John Bevere.  One of his most recent books is called "Good or God" and it's all about discerning what is good or God. If something is "good" means does that mean that it must be from God?  What is the definition of good?  What does the Bible say about it? I watched an interview with John where they discuss this topic for 28 minutes.  Highly recommended. Link below:

http://www.daystar.com/ondemand/video/?video=4536332706001

The following is my reflections on the video, topic and the first two chapters of the book "Good or God" (which you can get emailed to you as a free sample).  Of course I want to read the whole thing now and will be ordering it online. haha.  

This topic really speaks to me because we live in an age where compromise is the norm and most Christians have a very skewed understanding of what walking in purity looks like.  Since I was very young I felt God calling me to a life set apart for Him and He placed in me a strong desire for purity. To set the bar high and stick to it my whole life, even after marriage, since I believe that purity is a condition of the heart, not just your physical sexual purity. It was easy enough for me to walk out this purity in my teen years because I really wasn't interested in dating at that age anyways.  I knew I needed to walk through a lot of healing and find out who God had called me to be before I would be ready to meet my future husband. I never wanted to be one of those people who date a bunch of people before getting married.  I knew that with each relationship I would give a piece of my heart away and I wanted to keep my heart whole and fully intact for the man I would commit to spending the rest of my life with.  

I waited until I was 22 to enter my first relationship, and for the first time ever I experienced temptation and my stance on purity was challenged.  Because of a boundary I had set early on in saying that I didn't want to kiss until I was married... my first boyfriend respected that and didn't try to kiss me.  I really respect that he at least honoured me in that area.  Yet we still cuddled and got closer than we should have and I can remember thinking in the heat of those moments "But this feels so good and I feel so safe with him... how can this be wrong?" Of course, later after the passion had died down and I was alone again with my thoughts...the Holy Spirit would convict me and I knew I had compromised His standards of holiness for me.  Keep in mind, if I were comparing to worldly standards or even that of other Christians I knew... I could have easily justified my actions and said "Well we didn't touch any private areas, we kept our clothes on, and we didn't even kiss! That's actually really impressive!"  Yet God's word never says anything about godly living meaning that we just do better than the person next to us.  He actually says "Be holy, as I am holy."  That means that it is actually possible to live a holy life!! Granted we can't do it separate from Jesus and we need the Holy Spirit empowering us to make righteous decisions, impart godly wisdom, and help us discern good from evil; But holiness is not this unattainable, "we'll be holy when we get to heaven" kind of deal.  It's for now.

I have been in one more relationship since that first one, and there is something alarming I have learned both from my ex and other Christian guy friends who I've talked with about boundaries and physical closeness in dating relationships:

The more a Christian compromises their purity and does things they cannot take back, the lower their standards become for the next relationship.  They find ways to justify their actions as good and acceptable in God's sight, without actually consulting God or reading His word to check to see if their lowered standards are in line with God's standards. Often, instead of repenting (which means to go back to a higher way of thinking...ie. renewing our minds to God's way of thinking) and resetting the bar to where God put it... they leave the lowered bar where it is and become disillusioned.  Their conviction becomes muddied and their hearing dull as they tell themselves (and others) that "God understands" their lowered standards.  Their compromise and sin serves as a barrier between them and God and intimacy with Him is tainted, if not impossible.

In both relationships I was the only one who clearly stated what my boundaries were but I never heard the guy say what his were... I suspect because his standards were lower than mine so all he was going to try to do was respect mine.  The thing is, as you fall in love with someone, even if it is a shallow kind of love in the beginning phases.. you want to be closer to that person.  Since my second relationship was long distance the whole time, I only got to spend a few visits in person with my second boyfriend before we broke up. When you are with someone who has compromised way further than you have, it is hard for them to reset that bar and it comes naturally for them to want to ease you into letting your guard down more and more.  The more you trust someone, the easier it becomes.  Since he seemed to have no qualms about how close we had gotten, and we had in fact been exercising a lot of self control when together, I slowly smothered that still small voice.  I learned that the only way to walk in rebellion to the Lord is to stop listening to His voice.  If I was truly maintaining intimacy with Him, recalibrating (or re-aligning) myself with His word every day which renews our minds, and inviting Him to speak into my life on a daily basis, I know that I would not have wanted to compromise the way I did.

I once had a guy friend who I didn't know that well but who had a way with words and knew all the Christian lingo to sound godly and say all the right things.  He seemed to be one of those people who could probably talk himself out of any problem, and was used to getting his way.  We were talking about boundaries in relationships and I expressed my regret at having kissed (for 2.5 days) my ex on the last visit I had before ending things.  I had wanted to save my lips for one man alone and had determined to wait until I was engaged and had told my ex that.  Yet we did end up kissing and I while I enjoyed it was much as he did, I recognize that I was in a vulnerable place with my judgement clouded by emotions and hormones.  I would have hoped that he would have stopped us both before it got to that point... but he didn't and neither did I.  

The surprising part came in hearing my other guy friend say that he was happy I had had that experience with my ex and said that you learn a lot about a person by how they kiss and how they cuddle or show affection.  What the Holy Spirit had convicted me of this Christian friend was telling me was perfectly fine and good while using human reasoning along with his own extensive experiences to explain why.  I have no doubt that you do indeed learn a lot about a person through various displays of affection, however, I know that you can get to know the heart and character of a person and learn all those things about them without the physical closeness or compromising the standards God has given you.  You can learn whether the person you are dating is someone you want to marry without compromising.  I think the best way to go about it is for both people to pray separately and together, asking God to show them what He wants their relationship to look like, how they can honour each other and Him, and for the Holy Spirit to be the one to tell both people when it's ok to get a bit closer, to kiss on the cheek....whatever.  As human beings with powerful hormones, we have a tendency to rush these things...yet the fruit of the Spirit is patience and self control and God's timing is always perfect.

I know that the man that God brings me is not going to push me to compromise the purity God has called me to, but rather will partner with me in that and call me higher.  He is not going to be happy about the pieces of my heart I have shared with other men.  He won't say "oh I'm glad you had a couple days of practice kissing someone else so when you and I kiss you'll know a thing or two".  In the same way that I hope and desire to marry someone who has honoured me long before meeting me by keeping himself pure and saving himself for me alone.... I know he will be honoured that I have done the same and fought hard for my purity and kept those most precious parts of my heart, body, and soul tucked away only for him.  The entire season we have before marriage is a testimony and evidence of how faithful (or unfaithful) we will be to our spouse after marriage.

We recently did a three week series at my church on Kingdom Relationships.  It was so good and so beneficial to hear all the teachings and wisdom we can glean from the scriptures on godly singleness, dating, and marriage.  One of the things that really impacted me was this: When you are dating or engaged, every day that you say "no" to going further physically and compromising with each other before marriage, it counts for a year of "no"s to all the other men (or women) who will proposition you after you are married.  Every time you say "no" to each other before marriage, you are making a deposit in the "trust account" which will make your trust in each other's fidelity so much stronger after you are married.  On the flip side, every time you compromise or push the other person to go further than they initially agreed to, you are telling them at the subconscious level "You can't trust me." You are are not honouring them and there will be less trust after you are married than if you had held back and showed you could have self control before you were married.

While I know that no person is beyond redemption, I have also witnessed first hand how a person's history is the best prediction of how they will act in the future.  Sleeping with people before marriage is practice for unfaithfulness after marriage.  It is getting yourself into the habit of compromise and rebellion and ultimately just selfish all around.   

I have heard and also used this quote many times to remind myself to never settle for the good things in life that the enemy would try to use to distract me from God's best.  "Good is the enemy of best."  And of course those seemingly good things never appear to be evil.. because then we would of course run.  The enemy always sugar coats temptation.  The way that leads to death is marked with good ideas and good intentions which replaced godly wisdom and godly motives.  

"The enemy was able to get Eve to turn on her Creator by undermining her perspective of God's character." - John Bevere

There was a period of time where I started to lose hope that there were any single godly men left out there in my age bracket who had kept themselves pure and not slept with a bunch of women (or even a few) and didn't struggle with pornography.  It's expected that unbelievers will sleep around and have no fear of the Lord in how they live their lives.  That is normal for them.  They don't know any better.  They haven't had an encounter with Jesus and Truth.  Yet, one would hope that as children of God, sons and daughters with a high mandate and calling to represent the kingdom of God to the world... that we would understand the weight of covenant and trust that if God said something is only meant for marriage, He probably knows what He is talking about!

I know that nothing is impossible with God and He is able to fulfill the desires He has put in our hearts...in fact, He is excited and can hardly wait to fulfill those desires!! Yet there were several things that Christian friends have said to me over the past year... people I respected... that planted seeds of doubt which undermined my trust in God and tainted my perspective of God's character. One person said "You never know Emma, God might surprise you and bring you a man who has been fully in the world and done all kinds of things you never did so that as a Christian, he'll be able to minister to people groups you couldn't reach and you'll make a great team!".  Another person told me, when I was expressing my hope to be with someone who had also waited for marriage that "At our age we can't afford to be picky."  It's a sad reality that many people, including Christians, will try to label high standards and waiting for God's best as being picky.  Yet it happens, and most often from others who have compromised and can't take it back.  (I'm not talking about waiting for "perfect" because no such person exists and we'll always have some kind of conflict and things to work through with whomever we marry. There is a difference between "high standards" and "perfection".) I think that the root of all deception is pride in thinking we can't be deceived.. that we actually know best and that somehow...God is withholding something good from us, so we'll just go ahead and prove Him wrong by doing what makes us feel good. Yet the Bible shows that this will only lead to disaster and death.  Death to our sensitivity to the Holy Spirit, death to our intimacy with God, death to our spirits, death to the destiny and good plan God has for our lives, and death to a lot of the dreams we may have had at one point but will eventually give up on.

The thing about temptation and compromise is that it is always disguised as good.  John Bevere writes:

So the question I am asking the Lord today is "In what areas of my life have I replaced Your divine standard of good with my own standard of good?  Where have I compromised and given myself the "God approved" stamp without actually testing it to see if it lined up with Your character, Word, and Your definition of holiness?"

 John Bevere summarizes chapter two with this sobering point:

Of course there are so many other areas in which we compromise taking what seems to be "good" instead of God.  Chocolate ice cream tastes good but it certainly isn't health and life to our bodies.  It isn't good for us... but it tastes good.  There are many movies out there that we could justify watching by saying "I got something good out of it." when in fact, it does not line up with Philippians 4:8 "Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy -- meditate on these things."

I was reflecting specifically on the area of relationships and purity because it seems to be the biggest area I see Christians compromising in, and I am even tempted to compromise in.  There is such a cry in my heart to see my brothers and sisters in Christ rise up and become a counter-culture instead of a sub-culture.  To see believers boldly walking in purity and holiness without it being deemed as "religious" or "legalistic" by other Christians who live more loosely and have embraced compromise.  Let's not condemn one another, but lead by example and call each other higher.  We renew our minds by being in the Word, so let's be passionate about being in the Word of God and receiving fresh revelation from Him every day!