Striving to Love God, His Word, and His People.

6 Reasons We Know God Wants What’s Best For Us – Part 2

This is the second post in a two part series. You can read Part 1 here.

6 Reasons We Know God Wants What is Best for Us

(4) God created a purpose for us in life 

Some of you reading this are retired, are approaching retirement, or wish retirement was closer. The one thing that those who are retired know is that retirement doesn’t mean you don’t work anymore.

Take my dad for instance, he worked at the same job for 33 years. Now he is retired. But if you looked at my dad’s schedule, you wouldn’t think he is retired. That’s because he is just as busy, if not busier, than he was when he was working a full-time job. The reason my dad and many of you don’t just sit on the couch all day is because we were created to work.

You see, work gives us purpose in life. That is why we do it even when we are retired. The One who created work is God. After placing Adam in the garden, God tells Adam in Genesis 2:15,

to work it and keep it” (Gen. 2:15b)

God could have placed Adam in the garden and left him to lounge around all day, but He knew that wasn’t good for Adam, so He instituted work. He did that because God wants what’s best for us.

(5) God created a helper for us

It’s no mystery our culture doesn’t think much of the institution of marriage, and that many of our cultural elites despise it.

Dr. Keith Ablow from the “Fox News Medical A-Team” thinks marriage is “a source of real suffering for the vast majority of married people.” He basis that off his own observations as a psychiatrist, where he sees the vast majority of marriages ending in divorce with the couple hating each others.

Popular actress Cameron Diaz, recently said that “[she doesn’t] think we should live our lives in relationships based off old traditions that don’t suit our world any longer.”

While those are just two voices from popular culture, they represent what a large majority of people think of the institution of marriage. But God hasn’t designed marriage to be an insufferable institution. Marriage is given to us as a gift.

After God places Adam in the garden, He discovers he is alone. And in Genesis 2:18,

… The Lord God said, ‘It is not good that man should be alone; [so God says He] will make him a helper fit for him” (Gen. 2:18).

That is exactly what God does. He creates Eve to be Adam’s helper. Seeing Eve, Adam is ecstatic, and the first institution of marriage is formed (Gen. 2:19-25).

So from the beginning, marriage was designed to be a help to us. Something we are to look forward to and be excited about, not dread. Something we are to love, not hate. God gives us a helper, He gives us marriage because He wants what is best for us.

(6) God wants what’s best for us because He sends Jesus

After Adam and Eve sinned in Genesis 3, their relationship with God was broken. They were cast out of the garden to face the consequences of their sin in a broken and fallen world.

While they broke their relationship with God by sinning, God didn’t want their relationship to remain broken forever. A plan developed before the foundations of the world was in motion to restore man and God’s relationship. The plan involved Jesus – the Son of God – who came, lived a perfect life, and then died in our place.

On the cross at Calvary as Jesus hung there dying, the Father’s wrath was poured out on Him; wrath that should be poured on us. But because God wants what is best for us, He sends His Son to die in our place so that our relationship with Him might be restored and we would experience eternal life.

Hopefully by now you see that God really does want what is best for us.

Question for Reflection

  1. Do you believe God wants what is best for you? Why or why not?

Resources

Post developed from the sermon: Does God Want What’s Best For Us?

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