The Tension Between Good Enough & Great

There's something that drives me nuts.

It's the frustration I feel when I pour myself into a project or a message thinking it's going to be great only to walk away feeling like it fell far short of "great" & landed somewhere closer to "good". When it does, it usually makes a huge "Thud!"

Grrrrr.

I have to be honest... I am sometimes (usually) tempted to try to ignore my frustration & just sit there in the "good" area. But then I start remembering Scriptures like, "Whatever you do, do it with all your might," & "Do everything as unto the Lord." (Do you tell your conscience to shut up, too?)

That's when I find myself in a battle--sometimes mental, sometimes verbal, and never loud enough for anyone else to hear me. (Well... Almost never... Sort of...)

Anyway...

I find myself in an all-out war with this humongous, Jabba-the-Hut-like beast that just wants to suck the life out of everything around it, including me, my passion, & my vision!

You may have seen this thing in your life, too: it just wallows in pathetic mediocrity, babbling some incoherent, gurgling sound. It becomes eerily chant-like & the scary part is that it has that same can't-get-it-out-of-my-head catchiness as the theme song for Sesame Street. (Sunny day... Keeping the... Clouds away... Gotcha!)

But, if you listen closely, you can almost make out something in the gurgling...

"Gooooooooood eeeeeeeeee nouuuuuuuuuuu ghhhhhhhh."
"Gooooooooood eeeeeeeeee nouuuuuuuuuuu ghhhhhhhh."
"Gooooooooood eeeeeeeeee nouuuuuuuuuuu ghhhhhhhh."

Like a drug, this mantra pulls you in to a euphoric state of comfortable numbness (thanks for the words, Pink Floyd). But like any lie, it doesn't tell you what it really means...

"I'm going to kill you... I'm going to kill you... I'm going to kill you..."

If you hear that, then you know for sure that you are right in the middle of a battle between life and death! That's why the beast moans that "good enough" garbage... It could never sucker you in if it told you what it really means.

There's only one way out of it's clutches: you have to reject death & choose life... You have to reject "good" & choose "great"!

It's a flesh vs. Spirit thing... It's a man vs. God thing... It's a by-might-&-power vs. by-My-Spirit thing.

You won't be satisfied with less because God doesn't deserve any less.

Therein lies the tension... Can you feel it?