A few years ago I stumbled across a short Bible verse during my devotions that truly changed my life.
It was a verse I had read dozens of times over the years, but it was this time where it jumped off the page for me. (Which is why you develop the habit of meditating daily on Scripture, and re-reading those same 66 books over and over again throughout your life. These are the “living and active” words that God will use 90% of the time to speak to your heart, and you just never know when one of them will rev to life inside of you.
So what is this amazing verse that changed my life forever? It’s Psalm 37:3:
“Trust in the Lord and do good.”
There it is – your life’s mission in seven words.
The order of the words matters. What am I to do with my life? First of all, you are to enter into a relationship with the God who made you. “Trust in the Lord”. That’s the first order of business. You miss this, you miss it all. You’re to find your highest joy and satisfaction in seeking and knowing your Maker. A venerable, old confession of the faith began, “The chief end of man is the glorify God and enjoy him forever.”
It’s when that relationship begins, that your life’s second purpose arises: You were put on this earth to do good. To increase God’s beauty, goodness, and love in the places where he has put you.
Again, the order is important. You don’t do good first, then God notices you and asks you to be on his team, because How could he not include someone as virtuous as you? Sorry, but your relationship with him has nothing to do with your virtue or morality. The ocean of our hearts has churned out the polluted foam of enough selfish and stupid things in the past week to exclude us forever from sharing a perfect heaven with a holy God.
That I can even have a relationship with God is only possible because of how good he is. So good in fact that he became human in Jesus Christ, and entered into this sin-shattered world of ours to rescue us. And my relationship with him begins by trusting him that this is so, full stop. Only then, once God has reclaimed my soul for him, does he turn me around to show me the world, and say, “Now go into that world that I love very much, and in my name, you do good.” Say the seven words right now: Trust in the Lord and do good.
If you ask me, this verse ought to give John 3:16 a run for its money as to which one should be held aloft in football endzones around the world.