The Good,
the Bad, and
the Ugly
A FEW YEARS AGO, the Soviet submarine Kursk went
down in the Barents Sea. When diving crews reached the
sunken submarine, they heard tapped SOS signals coming
from inside the sub. The crew was wondering, Is
there any hope?
Like those sailors, many people today feel trapped in
impossible situations. They feel like banging against their
circumstances and wondering the same thing: Is there
any hope?
Do you ever feel that way, wondering how your circumstances
could possibly be worked out, how your life
could come to mean something?
Well, let me tell you what I know is true: God is up
to something great.
It's true. He's up to something great in every person's
life. Do you believe that? Do you feel that God is up to
something great in your life? That His plans and purposes
for you are about more than just trudging through the
days, wondering to yourself, Is there really any hope? Do I
have a purpose?
This book is for people who feel that they are fresh
out of hope. It's for people who've made big mistakes,
who've seen every ray of sunshine turn into clouds of
rain. It's for people with broken dreams and lingering
disappointments-people whose hope and sense of purpose,
despite their best efforts, have been dashed to the
ground. It's even for people who've known success but
still have holes in their hearts.
And not all hope-deprived people are poor either. If
you have money, maybe you're spending it on psychologists,
trying to find hope within yourself. Trying by mental
manipulation and self-analysis to drive out anger, fear, and
negativity, as though by emptying yourself of bad you
might automatically be filled with good.
But hope is not the absence of despair. It's the presence
of something far greater, something only God can
give. Hope is not passive; it's the most active force in the
world because it is derived from the most powerful Being
of all: Hope comes from God. It's real. And it's never
more than a moment away. And with hope comes purpose.
That's the message of this book-through all the
circumstances in your life, God is up to something great.
So let's get started .
I doubt Clint Eastwood ever realized that a character he
played would introduce a phrase into the English language
that would still be used decades later. But he did so
just the same, through a movie he was in in the 1960s. I
didn't see The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly when it first hit
the silver screen, but I saw it on video years later. By that
time the title had given our culture an expression that
hasn't gone away for nearly forty years now.
Well, the title of the movie made me think of a guy
I knew who'd just graduated from medical school. He
had been given a full scholarship, which paid all his bills
and let him study twenty-four hours a day. By my reckoning,
that was "good" because it was something positive
and beneficial that moved him forward in life.
I knew another guy who'd been given a full scholarship
to a different kind of school, to study engineering.
But instead of studying and learning, he spent his time
drinking beer and goofing off. He flunked out. That was
"bad" because he brought disaster on himself.
I knew a third fellow who'd planned to be a surgeon.
But one day a lawn mower he was using blew up and
burned his hands so badly that he lost several fingers.
And that was "ugly" because his dream died through
something that wasn't his fault.
My question is this: How often have you used the
terms good, bad, and ugly to characterize what's happened
in your life? All of us go through good, bad, and just plain
ugly times at one point or another.
But, friend, that's only half the story-because God
is up to something great through all of it.
Through His magnificent grace, God can take the
good, the bad, and the ugly experiences in your life and
use them to make you unbelievably better at what He's
created you for, whatever that might be! And that's what
is so amazing about God-He can take all those good,
bad, and ugly experiences and use them for your calling.
That's good news, right?
In God's economy, all is redeemed and nothing is
ever lost. He can take the good things that we remember
most fondly, the bad things we might like to forget, and
the ugly things that have shaped us into people we didn't
start out to be and use all of them to facilitate His individual
purpose for each and every one of us.
Including you.
As Job said of God: "I know that You can do all
things, and that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted"
(42:2). God is able to take and make whatever He wills.
He can take whatever and whoever you are and make you
into whatever and whoever you need to be to become
your best possible self.
This is one of the most glorious promises in all of
Christianity. If God couldn't mold us and break us-if
He couldn't pull us back from the jaws of hell and turn
lives of waste into lives of witness-an awful lot of us
would have suffocated, drowned, or blown ourselves up
a long time ago. If He couldn't take our strengths and our
weaknesses and our mistakes and the bad things that have
happened to us and use them for His purposes and our
benefit
Well, that's what this book is all about.
Because God can take the good times, the bad times,
and the ugly times we all endure and use them to
instruct, strengthen, and refine us for His holy purposes.
He can!
Excerpted from God Is Up to Something Greatby Tony Evans Copyright © 2002 by Tony Evans
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
