Only Settle for the Best

Have you ever wanted the best of something, not wanting to settle for what is OK or good? Well God does as well. He wants what is best for us and He tells us in Philippians 1:9-11how we can achieve it and what it will result in, in our lives.  And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.
 
First, how do get what is best: well it all starts with prayer. We must be asking for the best from God for our lives and we must be willing to let go of everything else. The willingness to let go is tied directly to what we love. The things we love the most we will not want to let go of and we need to determine that we will only love the correct or godly things. Once we have set our hearts on what to love we must not be satisfied with the how of our love. You see, we can all learn to love better or more completely. Every time, we make the decision to love it is based on partial knowledge at best. Often, when we learn more, our love diminishes. Yet here we are challenged to allow our love to grow in knowledge. So the more we learn the more we love. The more we actually love, the better we should learn how to love. That is letting our love abound in knowledge and depth of insight. This is what will lead to what is best for us.
 
Moving toward and achieving what is best will also produce results in our lives. The first result is, we will become pure and blameless. How? Well if we are loving with the growing love of God it will change our thoughts, words and actions resulting in our becoming pure and blameless. We will also notice other things being produced in our lives, the side effects of living in right standing with God. The list of what these are can be quite long but let me mention just one. Peace! When we are in right standing with God there is a peace that guards and guides our hearts and actions. This is the peace of knowing that we are living and loving like God wants us to and it is one of the first fruits to develop in a our lives. Are we living in that peace today? If not we may need to work on achieving what is best…experiencing and passing on the love of God.