You want to honor Jesus don’t you? You know that whatever you do is to be done for his glory. Here’s the main way you can do that. No – that’s not a misprint, not an exaggeration. Being optimistic about the Lord isn’t just a way of honoring him. It’s the way. Ultimately, all other ways of glorifying him are rays from this sun.

“‘I will surely do thee good’ is just the essence of all the Lord’s gracious sayings. Lay a special stress on the word ‘surely.’ He will do us good, real good, lasting good, only good, every good. He will make us good, and this is to do us good in the very highest degree. He will treat us as he does his saints while we are here, and that is good. He will soon take us to be with Jesus and all his chosen, and that is supremely good.” Charles H. Spurgeon[1]

Mmm, Mmm Good!

One of my fondest boyhood memories comes from my mother’s kitchen.[2] My mom could cook. And she could bake. The woman was a Cajun Julia Child. One of her specialties was chocolate cake. I can see one now: three Frisbee round, bronze colored layers, each about two inches tall, with mahogany brown icing, thick as paste, mortaring them and blanketing the whole; mother mixing the icing in a bowl then slathering it all over the cake with a wide white plastic knife; then handing me the bowl and a spoon to treat myself to the ribbon slivers of icing left on its sides and bottom. Like Campbell’s soup, it was “mmm, mmm good!”

The optimism about God that’s faith is mmm, mmm good too. That’s because when you’re optimistic about him he gives you pleasures you won’t otherwise enjoy. It’s these grace pleasures that make optimism about God so important. Here’s the proposition: When you’re optimistic about God he’ll do you great good.

Jesus’ dealings with the centurion we met earlier is a bowl full of the icing of good things God will do for you when you’re optimistic about him.[3] I give you five sweet slivers to help you “taste and see that the Lord is good.”[4] Remember, as you lick the spoon, this is just the icing, not the cake. These are examples of the kind of good the Lord will do you when you are optimistic about him. They in no way exhaust his generosity.

I. The Good Of Helping You Prevail Over Great Problems

One grace pleasure God will give you when you’re optimistic about him is the good of helping you prevail over great problems. Years ago when the going got tough for his Irish, Notre Dame Coach Frank Leahy wrote a one sentence motivational speech on the blackboard: “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” Here’s the Christian version: “God is at his best when life is at its worst.” Big problems are the OR where the Great Physician displays his peerless surgical skills.

You see this in the centurion’s situation. His treasured servant is dying. But he prevails over this problem through optimism about Jesus. Eavesdrop on his self-talk: “The Grim Reaper may have already written my servant’s obituary and chiseled his name on a headstone but Jesus can erase both.” And Jesus greets his optimism with his prevailing help. Will he always remove your problems? No. But when you’re optimistic about him he will always give you what you need to handle any problem he doesn’t remove. “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability but with the temptation he will also provide a way of escape, that you may be able to endure.”[5] Read your Bible from cover to cover and you’ll see the truth of this assurance. Again and again, when life is at its worst God is at his best for those who are optimistic about him. When you’re optimistic about God he will give you the good of helping you prevail over great problems.

II. Answering Big Prayers

A second good the Lord will do for you when you’re optimistic about him is the good of answering big prayers. If prayer is “letting your requests be made known to God,”[6] then the centurion is praying. Get the message in this fact: when you’re optimistic about God you will pray.

Say you love to fish. I invite you to fish with me in the Dead Sea. Will you? No. Why not? There’s nothing to catch there. Change the venue. We go to a well-stocked pond where the fish are teenager hungry and always biting. You’ll throw in your line won’t you? Yes! Why? You fish where you know they’re biting. And you’ll throw your prayer line in when you’re optimistic God’s pond teems with answers.

That’s what makes the centurion cast in his lure. He’s optimistic Jesus will help him. So he asks. Isn’t this the way Jesus encourages you to pray? Doesn’t he tell you, “My Father’s pond is stocked, his fish are always biting, throw in your line”? Isn’t that what he means when he says, “Ask and it shall be given”?[7] Optimism about God will make you pray.

The optimism that will make you pray will make you pray big prayers. Do you remember sitting on Santa’s lap as a child? What did you ask for? Something big I bet. Why? Because you were optimistic Santa could deliver. This made you Santa-size your requests. You ought to be the same little child at the throne of grace. You ought to Father-size your askings. God wants you to ask for big things, the bigger the better. The centurion does! He doesn’t fish for minnows; he fishes for marlin. He asks for the big thing of his servant’s complete healing. And Jesus gives him what he asks.

Again, this doesn’t mean God will always give you what you ask. What it means is there are great things available to you for the asking, far greater things than you imagine. Listen to your Father: “Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.”[8] Listen to Paul: you pray to the One who “is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think.”[9]

Listen to John Newton: “Thou art coming to a King / Large petitions with thee bring / For his grace and power are such / None can ever ask too much.”[10] Bring large petitions to him, Christian – the larger the better! When you do you will find the Lord giving you the good of answering your big prayers.

III. The Good of Pleasing God

A third good God will give you when you’re optimistic about him is the good of pleasing him. The movie Hoosiers is about the resurrection of a basketball coach’s Lazarus career. Norman Dale is banned from college coaching for punching one of his players. After 10 years in the Navy, a high school principal friend gives him the job of coaching the Hickory High School Huskers. The first person Dale meets at the school is English teacher, Myra Fleener. Dale later tells her he wanted to kiss her at that moment. The feeling wasn’t mutual. By the movie’s end this has changed. Dale is standing on the floor of the massive field house where the game was played, triumphantly hoisting the Indiana High School State Championship trophy. The crowd is thick as a New York subway car at rush hour. But Dale catches Myra’s eye. She is beaming with love and pride. Her pleasure in Dale means more to him than the victory. I want Jesus to beam at me this way. I want Jesus to tell me, “Charley, I’m pleased with you! Well done!” When I’m functioning sanely, I want this more than anything else.

How do I please him? By being optimistic about him. Don’t you see this in the centurion? Jesus applauds his optimism.[11] It delights our Lord. Think of this. You may not be a Christian celebrity. The New York Times won’t carry your obituary when you die. But if you live a life of optimism about God you’ll please him. In fact, every time you face any crisis, any struggle, any pain, any problem, any challenge with optimism about your Lord he beams with approval. There is nothing better than this. Nothing! I’d rather have Jesus’ smile than Tiger Woods’s Major Championships, Bill Gates’ wealth, and Brad Pitt’s good looks – combined! And I have his smile whenever I’m optimistic about him, because this optimism is faith: and faith pleases him![12] When you’re optimistic about God he will do you the good of being pleased with you.

IV. The Good of Allowing You to Encourage Others to Be Optimistic About Him

A fourth good the Lord will give you when you’re optimistic about him is the good of allowing you to encourage others to be optimistic about him. The canons are roaring; the muskets are prodigally picking off men in greedy bunches. Fear is heavy as ammunition smoke. Rebel soldiers are panicking, their fight or flight systems flashing “Flee!” But one man’s system flashes “Fight!” He refuses to take counsel of his fears. He holds his ground. General Bernard E. Bee spots him and rallies his men with words that leave this courageous officer with the nickname he still bears, like initials in a driveway long after the carver is gone. “Look, men, there is Jackson standing like a stone wall.”[13]

The sight of Thomas J. Jackson’s gallantry releases in Bee’s men the adrenalin of courage. They turn; they fight; they win. This is the power of example. It’s stronger than a nuclear bomb, more contagious than the flu. That’s one reason this centurion’s story is in the Bible.[14] The Holy Spirit tells you about him to infect you with the happy virus of optimism. It does this, doesn’t it? Don’t you find Zig Ziglar rousing? Doesn’t his example, and Jesus’ response, encourage you to be optimistic about your Savior? The wonder of wonders is, when you’re optimistic about God others will hoist their kites in your wind. You’ll be their Stonewall Jackson. And that’s good. It’s a good the Lord will gladly do you when you are optimistic about him.

V. The Supreme Good of God Allowing You To Honor Him

A fifth good the Lord will do you when you are optimistic about him is the supreme good of allowing you to honor him. I frequently counsel people. They enter my office with shoulders drooping like tree limbs blanketed by heavy snow. They open closets full of skeletons and tell me things that defeat them, shame them, and strangle their souls. Before they begin, I say, “I want to tell you something before you tell me anything. I want to tell you, ‘Thank you.’” I typically get a “what’s wrong with this guy?” look. Then I explain. “Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me your truth. Your trust honors me.” I mean that. When someone trusts me enough to ask for my help that person is saying, “Charley, I see you as someone with integrity, compassion, and wisdom.” And that honors me.

The centurion demonstrates that when you’re optimistic about Jesus you honor him as a counselee does his counselor. This man’s optimism about Jesus is “a thousand tongues” singing “our great Redeemer’s praise.” It confesses that Jesus is so good and so great that nothing is too hard for him. This exalts our Lord.

You want to honor Jesus don’t you? You know that whatever you do is to be done for his glory.[15] Here’s the main way you can do that. No – that’s not a misprint, not an exaggeration. Being optimistic about the Lord isn’t just a way of honoring him. It’s the way. Ultimately, all other ways of glorifying him are rays from this sun.[16] Isn’t this breathtaking? The simple childlike faith that’s optimism about God allows you, a frail creature of dust and feeble as frail, to honor him. Truly, his thoughts are not our thoughts, and his ways are not our ways. You see that in this fact that when you’re optimistic about him, he does you the supreme good of allowing you to honor him.

Christian, here are five examples of the pleasures God will give you when you are optimistic about him. Sweet as these grapes from the grace vine are, there are plenty more waiting to be plucked with the hand of optimism. Doesn’t this encourage you to begin living by the Grace Paradigm?

Doesn’t the good God will do you if you live by the Grace Paradigm make you want to shift to it? Make that shift now, Christian. Make it and you’ll soon see, God’s Grace Pleasures are Mmm, Mmm Good!  

Charley Lynn Chase is a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and is a teacher at First Presbyterian Day School in Macon, Ga. This article is a chapter in his forthcoming book “Grace Focused Optimism: Learning to Live the Grace-Governed Life of Optimism About God.”

[1] C. H. Spurgeon, Cheque Book of the Bank of Faith, (Scotland: Christian Focus Publications, 1996), 149.

[2] My mother’s name was Verna. I dedicate this chapter to her.

[3] “When he entered Capernaum, a centurion came forward to him, appealing to him, ‘Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, suffering terribly.’ And he said to him, ‘I will come and heal him.’ But the centurion replied, ‘Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I too am a man under authority with soldiers under me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.’ When Jesus heard this, he marveled and said to those who followed him, ‘Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ And to the centurion Jesus said, ‘Go; let it be done for you as you have believed.’ And the servant was healed at that very moment.” Matthew 8:9-13.

[4] I Peter 2:3.

[5] 1 Corinthians 10:31.

[6] Philippians 4:6-7.

[7] Matthew 7:7.

[8] Psalm 81:10. Commenting on this verse Calvin writes, “He not only bids them open their mouth, but he magnifies the abundance of his grace still more highly, by intimating, that however enlarged our desires may be, there will be nothing wanting which is necessary to afford us full satisfaction. Whence it follows that the reason why God’s blessings drop upon us in a sparing and slender manner is, because our mouth is too narrow. . . . John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentary Volume 5, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1979 reprint), 320.

[9] Ephesians 3:29.

[10] John Newton, Come, My Soul, Thy Suit Prepare.

[11] Matthew 8:10.

[12] Hebrews 11:6.

[13] Steve Wilkins, All Things for Good, (Nashville, Tennessee: Cumberland House Publishing, 2004), 89.

[14] Romans 15:4.

[15] 1 Corinthians 10:31.

[16] For example, patience in trial honors the Lord. But what is patience except endurance born of optimism that the Lord is in control and is working for your good? Praise honors God. What fuels praise? The optimism that calls on God for help, experiences his help, and returns to worship and thank him for his kindness. Faith honors God. And what is faith? It’s optimism about God. Optimism about God is the root of every God honoring thought, word, and deed.