How To Live The Good Life

"If I want to know how to live in reality, I must know what God is really like." --Plato

Most people have dreams and fantasies, maybe even a bucket list of things to do in life in order to feel fulfilled or complete.  How about a bucket list of doing God's will?  Achieving the American dream isn't the answer to life; you can have everything to live on and nothing to live for!  The problem has never been dreams or wishes but in how to achieve them; most people end their lives in frustration have never "found themselves" or what God's will was for them.  We must be purpose-driven to have an impact and focused on our goals with a chord that will vibrate for eternity.

Not just to be remembered, but to be a game-changer.  According to the Bible, God has an intricate purpose and individual tailor-made plan for each of us, and if we are in God's will, walking by faith, we will find it to be the safest and most blessed place to be found.  We are hard-wired to work in our calling and to worship God.  He is interested in our whole being (heart, mind, body, soul, spirit) and its holistic health, not an unbalanced life that isn't worthy of our walk and has no testimony. 

Even Christians can have a secular worldview and not think biblically.  The goal in life is not just to be a goody-goody or to seek pleasure (you only go around once, grab all the gusto you can!), because God isn't primarily concerned with our "happiness," (which depends on happenings), but with us glorifying and enjoying Him.  There are intrinsic rewards and incentives in finding wisdom, which is more precious than rubies (cf. Prov. 8:11).   The result of the moral life is one of confidence and a good reputation, which is more valuable than riches too.

We all ought to seek a life beyond reproach so that the infidel has nothing evil to say about us (cf. Eph. 4:1).  One blockage to good thinking is not to have a Christian worldview; we all need to get our thinking straightened out and learn to think clearly, which will result in sound discourse and dialogue.  When we do find fulfillment and joy in life we become contagious and it shows.  Many people claim inner joy but haven't told their faces!

Plato thought of three inputs to our will, which control our ways:  desire, emotion, and knowledge.  We must make sure that we seek truth and feed on knowledge, wisdom, and understanding and even have a thirst for the Word, and we must have worthy ambitions and desires in life, and also the fulfilled person has his emotions in check.  But most people just are about as lazy as they dare to be and take the path of least resistance--the easy way out!

We must not ever pray for an easy life, but for God to increase our faith and strength. Remember, all a man's ways seem right to him, but the Lord weighs the heart (cf. Prov. 16:2).   The study of ethics is about living the good life and we find it by practicing our ethics (putting our creed into action) and believing in miracles from God.   What we do is expect great things from God, but we must attempt them too, as William Carey would say.  Aim high, then!

God is the moral center of the universe and we all must have a moral compass and show moral fiber, for character counts!   But there is a danger to reducing Christianity to a system of ethics, a rule book, a catalog of rules, or a list of dos and don'ts.   We must never lose focus but keep looking onto Jesus and cultivate that personal relationship with Him.  Our ethic shows our character and the faith we have is the faith we show: we demonstrate, validate, and authenticate our faith by turning it into deeds, otherwise it's suspect and spurious, even bogus and hypocritical. Turning our knowledge into action is faith, demonstrated in obedience.   But avoiding sin and immorality is not all there is to Christian ethics; its summation is to follow Christ in full renewing, ongoing surrender.  We must not only cease to do evil, but do good!

Upon following Christ, now we don't go by feelings, but when doing the will of God, we'll have a peace that passes all understanding.  The person who really knows Christ knows how to live and live in reality.  Knowing truth is a matter of repentance and of being oriented to reality--only God can set us free form delusion (cf 2 Tim. 2:25).   Life in Christ isn't always a religious high or on cloud nine, but varies with the task, for God always fills us and anoints us for His work.   We must know and learn the real formula for feeling good:  know right, think right, do right, and finally, to feel right.  Doing the right thing should make one feel right.

God is good, but being good without God is evil and a parody of the real thing.  Now, I must conclude with the standard Jesus set (the Golden Rule):  the highest ethic of all and the highest incentive to do it.  We will never be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect--that's the standard, but the direction we go is the test!  Remember, God has great expectations for us and wants us to attempt to move mountains with our mustard-seed faith!   We all have unrealized potential and should actualize the innate worth we possess, not to let it be dormant and thus waste our lives.   Soli Deo Gloria!