The Best I Can… Really

For those who are new to this blog, and I suppose I’d have to place myself in that category today, a year or so ago I had a reoccurring theme I was writing on. In this theme, I would take a short prayer, supposedly spoken by a child, and answer it as best I can. Like most of my series, this one was left unfinished. Today I’d like to bring this one back as I say what I can to young Frank, age unknown.

Dear God, I am doing the best I can. Really.
-Frank

You know what Frank? I’m doing the best I can as well. There’s nothing wrong with that, but you just don’t want to fall into the trap of making that the way you try to make God happy. You see, before you can be good enough for God you have to find out how good God expects you to be. Does he want you to obey your parents all of the time or most of the time? If you obey them almost all of the time, is that good enough?

To answer this question, we need to have some sort of answer of just how good you have to be. We can look to our pastors or our parents, but you don’t have to look very hard to see that they have done some things that are wrong before. You see, if you just look at other people for this, you end up judging yourself by them and judging them by yourself. Before you know it, you will be worried that someone is better than you even as you begin to look at others like they must not be the kind of person who God would want to have around. So in order to keep yourself from this, I suggest that you look to the only person who never sinned at all, and that person is Jesus.

Jesus was perfectly righteous. That means that he was good enough to please God. Nobody was as righteous as Him and nobody has ever been that righteous since. All of us have failed and fallen short of the glory of God. That means that the good things you do are not enough for God to say that you can be with Him. This is a terrifying thought and it should be. People all over the world are trying their best in the hope that God will see them and say that they are good enough. But when we compare ourselves to the model that we have been given it is clear that we cannot ever be that good.

God saves people, that much is clear. So how does He determine who can be with Him and who cannot? Is it decided by who goes to church? Is it decided by who obeys their parents the most? It can’t be either one of these things. While each of them are very good, neither one will make you good enough. You have to find your righteousness somewhere other than yourself. Take a look at a verse I learned when I was about your age:

Titus 3:5
he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit,

From what I see in this verse, God saves people for reasons that we don’t always understand. If we were saved because of our own good deeds, we could understand that and we could try to do more good deeds than bad. We could then earn our way into Heaven because then God would owe us based on our works. God doesn’t owe anything to anybody, so that answer just wouldn’t work. The gift of salvation must be just that. It must be a gift. It is a gift of mercy that God gives to people who do not deserve it. It is a miracle that is just as incredible as any of the miracles you have heard about in Sunday School.

Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. God parted the Red Sea. God kept Jonah alive in the belly of a fish for three days. These are all incredible and so is salvation. If it were possible for us to earn our salvation, it would no longer be incredible and grace would not be amazing. If we could force God to save us because we are good, God would not have to show us any mercy. Being good and doing your best are very good things. God is happy when you obey your parents. Just don’t try to obey your parents so God will accept you. That is not how God accepts anybody. He accepts those who have received His gift of mercy.

So the next time you pray to God, why don’t you tell Him that you have tried to be good, but that you haven’t been good enough for Him? And then thank Him for the gift of mercy that He gave. This will honor God more than anything you can do and it will also remind you that God saves sinners, not people who are good enough to be saved.