Don't Settle

One of the devotionals I get talked about the idea of “settling” today; accepting the good when God has the great planned for us. Being an impatient person, I tend to settle far too often for what seems good to me. But God has things for us that are beyond our wildest imaginations. 1 Cor. 2:9 says, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.”

We look at the world and our lives through human eyes, but God looks at these through His all-knowing, spiritual eyes. We work toward goals that are based in this life, forgetting that what lasts is the unseen. Paul, who had every reason to boast in his accomplishments, said this:

“But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead” (Phil. 3:7-11).

Settling is accepting the things of this earth as a substitute for heavenly things. A.W. Tozer described it this way: “[We] have imitated the world, sought popular favor, manufactured delights to substitute for the joy of the Lord and produced a cheap and synthetic power to substitute for the power of the Holy Ghost.” These substitutes are not God’s best for us. They’re not even the real thing! How easily I am fooled into accepting a counterfeit because it’s readily available and requires little work and inconvenience. God has so much more for us if we will only seek Him with perseverance and refuse to accept anything less than the great things that come from Him alone.