The Difference Between Good, Better, and Best

Perhaps as a child, you heard your teacher at school say,

Good, better, best,
never let it rest,
until your good is better,
and your better is best.

God has promised us that His ways are the best path for us. And, in choosing God and His ways our devotion to Him will deepen. Well, I try to apply this in very practical ways to my own decision-making and choices. Here’s just one way that doing so has helped me develop a deeper devotion to God.

While living in Los Angeles I spent a lot of time in the car in traffic. There in the car — all alone — I had options about what I could think and do. For years I drove around with an easy-listening music station on the radio. That was a fairly good choice. However, after some thought, I decided a better choice for me would be to listen to classical music (a passion of mine). After thinking about my choice a little more, I decided an even better choice would be playing a CD of uplifting Christian music. Then I moved up the “better” scale again as I chose to listen to sermon CDs instead — recordings of a man of God teaching the Word of God to the people of God. Next, playing CDs of the Bible seemed even better. Then one day I turned the whole audio system off and landed on what for me was the best choice for my car time — memorizing Scripture. Good to better to best!

When I was a new Christian, I heard a more spiritually mature woman at church tell about a choice she made each day as soon as her husband left for work. She said she could do almost anything she wanted — turn on the TV and watch a soap opera or talk show, read the Los Angeles Times, or — her choice — pick up her Bible and have her quiet time. Here was a woman — a woman after God’s own heart — paying close atten­tion to what was good, better, and best, and striving to make the best choices.

Carole Mayhall of the Christian discipleship organization, The Navigators, once said “Daily I live with [one] fear — a healthy fear — that I will miss something God has for me in this life. And it is mind-expanding to contemplate all that He wants me to have. I don’t want to be robbed of even one of God’s riches by not taking time to let Him invade my life. By not listening to what He is telling me. By allowing the routine, pressing matters of my minutes to bankrupt me of time for the most exciting, most fulfilling relationship in life.”

I also do not want to miss out on God’s best due to merely choosing what is mediocre or just okay. At each moment of decision in your day, ask God to help you choose beyond the better choice to what is BEST!

Read The Difference Between Good, Better, and Best on Elizabeth & Jim George.