Are You Searching for Good or Evil?

Are You Searching for Good or Evil?

By Carol Round, Special to ASSIST News Service (Writer's Opinion)

CLAREMORE, OK (ANS – Feb. 20. 2015) “If you search for good, you will find favor; but if you search for evil, it will find you!”—Proverbs 11:27 (NLT).

We can read the Bible cover-to-cover many times but never recall every scripture. However, the Holy Spirit brings the perfect one to mind in His timing. That’s what happened to me when I recently attended LifeChurch.TV with a friend on a Saturday evening.

The first scripture Senior Pastor Craig Groeschel cited in his sermon was Proverbs 11:27: “If you search for good, you will find favor; but if you search for evil, it will find you!”

Using a real-life example, Pastor Groeschel used birds to demonstrate his message. A buzzard, he said, searches for dead things, like road kill, to feast on. However, the tiny hummingbird flits around looking for sweet things—the sweet nectar of a flower or that provided by a human in a feeder. “Both,” he said, “find what they’re looking for.”

As I thought about the scripture and the pastor’s example, I realized how true it is. If we don’t look for the good, then we will certainly see the evil in everything. I’m not saying we should look at the world through rose-colored glasses but neither should we be a “Negative Nancy” or a “Debbie Downer.” (Note: If your name is Nancy or Debbie, please do not be offended.)

How often we take offense, choosing not to seek the good in another person or a situation we cannot change. Romans 12:2 tells us “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.”

Through the renewal of our mind, which can only happen through a transformational relationship with Jesus Christ, we can begin to see the good in the world. Some believe it’s difficult to see the good when we are blasted constantly with negative news, courtesy of the media. Maybe that’s because bad news travels faster than the good. There is a common saying in the journalism business which is, “If it bleeds it reads.”

Instead of focusing on the evil in our world, which has been around since the beginning of time—remember Satan in the Garden of Eden—we need to see our world through the eyes of God. Evil breaks God’s heart. Genesis 6:6 says, “The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.”

In Romans 12:9, Paul writes, “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.”

Clinging to what is good should be the choice each Christian makes. Complaining about the evil in our world doesn’t change it. However, when we choose God’s way of life, we can even find beauty among the ashes. And often change our world in the process.

American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting—a wayside sacrament.  Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.”
(For more inspiration, visit the author's blog at www.carolaround.com).

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