Do Your Best

“What­ever you do, work at it with all your heart, as work­ing for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inher­i­tance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”

Colos­sians 3:23–24

How would your life look dif­fer­ently if you embraced and believed fully what the verse in Colos­sians states? If the truth above is some­thing you already believe and actively live out, how does this truth make a dif­fer­ence in your life?

“Do your best.”

That was all my par­ents ever asked of me. Year after year, as I advanced grade lev­els … all the way through col­lege, those were the words I heard count­less times:  “We will always be proud of you if you just do your best.”

Of course, my par­ents were extremely intel­li­gent and wise indi­vid­u­als.  They knew that I was capa­ble of doing very well no mat­ter what task I was focused upon if; I made an ade­quate effort. So my par­ents knew exactly how to exert just the right amount of pres­sure while sub­tly teach­ing me about responsibility.

They knew, of course, that by request­ing me to do my best, they were instill­ing in me a clear sense of account­abil­ity and self-reliance.  The times that I failed, I could blame no one else.  I knew that I fell short of my goal because I failed to deliver my best effort on a con­sis­tent basis.

The Divine Cre­ator asks the same of us, so this is yet another exam­ple of the won­der­ful way in which my Chris­t­ian par­ents lived our their faith in a qui­etly dig­ni­fied man­ner.  They didn’t pound me over the head with the Bible — lit­er­ally or fig­u­ra­tively — or yell Scrip­ture at me dur­ing every con­ver­sa­tion.  They didn’t haul me off to the pastor’s office to be coun­seled on the rare occa­sion that I fell short of the mark.

Instead, they did exactly what the Divine Cre­ator has done with human­ity:  Pro­vided the tools, instruc­tions, and inspi­ra­tion — and then allowed us to take it from there, await­ing the results and stand­ing ready to repeat the process as many times as nec­es­sary in order to assure our success.

We have been given free will, a tremen­dously impor­tant cen­ter­piece of our belief sys­tem.  It is up to us to make the most of that gift.  That is why we have also been given intel­lect — in order that we might ana­lyze, con­tem­plate, eval­u­ate, and ulti­mately exer­cise our free will by mak­ing choices.  Like our par­ents, the Divine Cre­ator hopes that we will make good choices.  Pro­duc­tive choices.  Healthy choices.  Kind choices.  The list goes on … each day of our life is com­prised of a series of choices, some about the minus­cule details of our daily jour­ney and some mon­u­men­tal that impact our very des­tinies.  As to all of those choices, we should work at mak­ing them with all of our heart, always mind­ful of the value of the gift of free will.  Always mind­ful of the ulti­mate sac­ri­fice that secured the gift for us and assures us that, when we fail, we will be uncon­di­tion­ally for­given, bathed in heal­ing love, and given the oppor­tu­nity to try as many addi­tional times as is nec­es­sary in order to succeed.

I believe that, even though we may not always have the lan­guage of Colos­sians at the fore­front of our con­scious­ness, that verse — and so many oth­ers like it — is ingrained in our sub­con­scious minds and informs our efforts through­out each and every day.  As Chris­tians, we have a foun­da­tional set of prin­ci­ples that fuel us, even when we are not actively con­tem­plat­ing them.  I think of my core beliefs as my “code of con­duct” from which I do not veer even though I may not be actu­ally think­ing about that code or mak­ing choices by lit­er­ally ask­ing myself, “If I do X instead of Y, will that be con­sis­tent with my Chris­t­ian beliefs?”  Real­is­ti­cally, life moves too quickly to make that overt prac­tice a real­ity at all times.

Rather, doing my best because of my beliefs became, over time, a “way of life.”  That does not mean that I always make the best choices.  But it does mean that when I don’t and have to regroup, refo­cus, and try again, I always do so with a firm faith foun­da­tion, con­fi­dent in the knowl­edge that I am for­given for my failures.

And every time I do not achieve my goals, I again hear my par­ents’ voices echo­ing in my head:  “Do your best.” No one, not even the Divine Cre­ator, could ever ask more of me.

Click here to access the list of all par­tic­i­pants and read their thoughts.

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