What Good Comes From This?
OPENING PRAYER:
Father, give me a heart like the ones who have gone before me and asked good questions instead of settling for easy rules. Teach me to seek what actually builds up, both in me and in the people around me.
READ: 1 CORINTHIANS 10:23-24 (NIV)
“‘I have the right to do anything,’ you say, but not everything is beneficial. ‘I have the right to do anything,’ but not everything is constructive. No one should seek their own good, but the good of others.” 1 Corinthians 10:23-24 (NIV)
Paul returns to this same phrase later in the letter, this time applied to a completely different issue, food offered to idols, showing that this filter wasn’t a one-time argument but a whole way of thinking.
REFLECT:
Rodney shared a memory of his father, that he said used to frustrate him as a teenager. His dad never drank alcohol, not because he thought it was forbidden or sinful, and not because he was judging anyone who did. When Rodney asked him why, his father would simply say he always looked at what he was about to do and asked, “What good can come from it?” As a young man surrounded by things that were fun but not exactly good for him, Rodney admits that question was maddening to hear over and over. Looking back now, older and having lost his father, he sees it differently.
That question is nearly identical to what Paul writes to the Corinthians about food, years after his first letter to them about the very same principle. Paul isn’t creating a new rule about eating meat sacrificed to idols. He’s applying the same filter he gave them before: not “is it allowed,” but “is it constructive, and does it serve someone besides me.” Rodney’s father had, without ever quoting chapter and verse, built his whole way of discerning right from wrong around that same question. He wasn’t legalistic. He was wise. There’s a real difference between the two, and it’s easy to confuse them when you’re young and just want an answer instead of a practice.
Discernment, unlike a rule, has to be re-asked every single time. That’s what makes it harder than legalism, and also what makes it actually formative.
APPLY:
Before your next decision this week, however small, pause and ask Rodney’s father’s question out loud: “What good can come from this?” Let the answer, even if it’s uncomfortable, actually shape what you do next.
I WILL STATEMENT:
“I will choose to honor God by choosing what is beneficial.”
CLOSING PRAYER:
Lord, thank you for the people who modeled wisdom for me long before I understood why it mattered. Give me the patience to ask good questions instead of chasing easy rules. Let my life build up the people around me, not just serve myself.
PRAYER REQUEST:
Share your prayer request and pray for others.