Lovers of Good

“You become what you behold.”

I still remember the first time my spiritual mentor said that to me. He sensed a misalignment in my life when it came to what I was ingesting, and he was dead on. The truth of it was, I was in the beginning stages of my walk with Christ and my desires and preferences had not yet come into alignment with Gods desires and preferences. This was difficult for me to see because, although I had been radically changed by Jesus, I was still the same guy with the same brain that had been conditioned to enjoy the things that were decidedly less than godly. What was needed in my life was a radical reorientation of heart, soul, and mind. Sound daunting?

Many times, a life with Jesus is portrayed as a denial of desire and an embracing of begrudging obedience; that couldn’t be further from the truth. On the contrary, God is so good and faithful that He transforms our wants into His wants. He does this through means like prayer, reading Scripture, fellowshipping with brothers and sisters in Christ, and worshipping with the gathered body of Christ on Sunday. Through our walking with Him amid our ordinary lives and regularly engaging in these means of grace, we can begin to see, as Paul says in Galatians, Christ formed in us.

A deeply searching and, honestly, scary question is this: When I think of nothing at all, where does my mind go? This can be frightening to consider, often because our minds seldom think of nothing at all in this age of distraction we live in. But if we can pause and really allow the Holy Spirit to aid us in doing an inventory of our interior lives, what would we find? When your mind is at rest, does it drift to good, true, and beautiful things? Or does it drift into dark, deceitful, nasty things? I want you to pay attention to what you find, because the mind and heart can play tricks on you if you aren’t careful. You will likely think that because your mind doesn’t drift to thoughts of murder, rape, or crack-smoking that you have a pretty good hold on this whole “loving what is good thing.” The mind is a deceiver though, and if you look closely, you will begin to see ways that you are not preferring to dwell on what is good, but rather you don’t dwell on what you believe to be bad. The real litmus test of your interior state is to look at what you think on and love, look at God’s unchanging and perfect Word, and see how the two line up. It is there that we can begin to see the cracks inside. Only then can we know what to pray for and what to fight against.

How, you might ask, does this work on a practical level? Many of the chapters in this book deal with the reality of God’s supernatural changing of our hearts and wills, but what does that look like practically? Well, this idea of being a lover of good paints a beautiful picture. Let me describe it for you. My wife hates horror movies. I don’t mean she gets spooked easily and can’t handle them (although she does), but rather I mean that she genuinely has no taste for them. For her, she doesn’t see anything in them worth pondering, remembering, or daydreaming about. I believe this is due largely to her parent’s intentionality in curating what she took in growing up. She didn’t watch dark and twisted films, didn’t sneak out to the living room to find her parents watching dirty movies, and didn’t listen to music that filled her head and heart with vile and dirty language. For her, she loves things that are good, not because she is a perfect angel (although she is), but because she has had her spiritual tastebuds attuned to the finer things in life, the things of God.

In the case of most men, we need a serious adjustment when it comes to these spiritual tastebuds. We are often inculcated with and exposed to dark things from a young age, and it takes much, much grace and much, much practice to overcome these patterns of thought and emotion. But if we surrender ourselves to Christ, allowing him to transform us from the inside out, rewiring our loves into the things he loves, then we will experience the freedom and joy of being lovers of good. These are the kind of men needed to win the world to Christ; men who find great satisfaction in a good cigar, their wonderful wife, playing catch in the yard with their kids, and watching the sun set over the mountains.

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Philippians 4:8).