Make God Look Good: A Guide to Fulfilling Your Ultimate Purpose on a Daily Basis

Copyright © 2015 Hilliard V. Castilla.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

ISBN: 978-1-4908-7064-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-7065-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-7076-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015902827

WestBow Press rev. date: 08/04/2015

Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Tribute

Introduction

1 Consider the Source: Making God Look Good in the Bible

2 Family Matters: Making God Look Good at Home

3 Beyond the Cubicle: Making God Look Good at Work

4 Sunday Best: Making God Look Good at Church

5 Honor Roll: Making God Look Good in School

6 That’s The Ticket: Making God Look Good in Politics

7 Ready For Prime Time: Making God Look Good in Sports and Entertainment

8 iGlorify: Making God Look Good in the Digital Age

9 From WWJD to MGLG: Making God Look Good in Everything

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to my parents: Theresa Pearl Castilla, an awesome woman of God who lived holy without excuse, taught excellence without compromise, and personified unconditional love; and to Deacon W. H. Castilla, who inspired me to write this book and who is, quite simply, the greatest man I have ever known.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First, I want to thank God for choosing me to write this book. I am truly humbled by the fact that he would use me to complete this or any other project. As my late friend Elder Ronald E. Moore used to say on my best day, I’m not worthy. Thank God for Jesus!

Second, I thank the Lord for my beautiful and gracious wife Tiffany and my awesome children, Amira Noelle, Kendall Josiah and Lydia Breyonne. Truly, the best part of my day is coming home to my family. They make me and God look good.

Finally, a sincere debt of gratitude is owed to all of the special people who have poured into my life over the years and without whom this book would not have been possible: from my father in the gospel Bishop Victor P. Smith to my recently departed friends Elder Ronald E. Moore and Deacon Edmund Burkhalter; from my grandmothers Pearlie Wright and Magolia Castilla to my sidekick and creativity guru Deacon Reginald Castilla; from my text consultant Sis. Elma Smith to my awesome church family at Higher Calling Ministries in Decatur, Georgia; from my other siblings and family members to friends and loved ones scattered throughout the nation; thank you for your love, support, and encouragement along the way. The challenge for me and readers of this book is to live up to the standards you all exceed every day.

TRIBUTE

Cortez

you encouraged me like no one else

you challenged me to reach my potential

you saw in me what others didn’t

you believed in me

now my highs won’t be as high

my disappointments will last a little longer

this journey won’t be the same

now that you’re gone

but you will always be a part of me

inspiration for this book and whatever I achieve

you were simply the best and I’ll cherish your memory, brother

until we meet again

Von

INTRODUCTION

She was four feet eleven inches tall and weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet. Naomi Doles, a missionary to West Africa who had been called to the mission field as a teenager, was now teaching my sixth grade Bible class at Christ Missionary and Industrial School (CM&I) in Jackson, Mississippi. Though small in stature, she was huge in every other respect; she had huge faith, a huge personality—and a huge voice. You wondered how such a booming, dynamic voice could emerge from such a small package. But it did. I enjoyed Ms. Doles’s Bible class. It wasn’t like Sunday school class, where we just learned Bible stories and recited during review time. Ms. Doles made the Bible come to life with Bible games, debates, and Bible drills. (Whatever happened to Bible drills?) Ms. Doles also introduced me to systematic theology. In those days, it didn’t have a fancy name. We simply called it the catechism. We had to memorize the Church of Christ (Holiness) USA catechism word for word, comma for comma, period for period. I memorized the catechism and memorized it well, not because I wanted to know so much about God, but because I did not want to incur the wrath of Ms. Doles. She was a sweet lady—when you did what she told you to do. If you failed to get your lesson, you were in mortal danger of hell’s fire (or so you believed).

Ms. Doles, with that rich, booming voice, could pray down God’s blessings from heaven or sing glorious praises to his name. But she could also put the fear of God in her sixth-grade students. So when she told you to learn, you learned. But it wasn’t just the fear factor that motivated me to learn. What normally would’ve been a tedious learning process became somewhat interesting because Ms. Doles was such a talented teacher. She would challenge us with numerical goals, invent memory games, and reward us with nice prizes whenever we learned significant portions of the catechism. And so, learn it I did.

To my surprise, I not only learned the catechism, but I retained much of what I learned for years. In fact, I still remember much of it today. One of the most significant questions posed in the catechism was Who is God? The answer was—I remember reciting this like it was yesterday—God is an uncreated spirit, maker of everything. Another significant question, and one that has particular relevance to this book, was Why were you created? The answer, and I still remember this too, was You were created for God’s own glory.

We were created for God’s glory. Wow. I didn’t understand it back then, but that simple phrase packs a wallop today. We were created for God’s glory. Not for our glory. Not for our own purposes. Not to do great things for ourselves. Not even necessarily to do (what we may consider) great things for God. We were created for his glory! Thank you, Ms. Doles. When we really wrap our minds around this concept—better yet, when we really get it deep down into our hearts that we were created for God’s glory—then our lives take on new meaning, new purpose. Indeed, it is only when we begin to actually live for God’s glory that we begin to live life to its fullest. The abundant life is the life lived for God’s glory.

In today’s theological circles, you hear so much talk about calling and purpose. Some preachers even maintain that their primary job is to speak calling and purpose into the lives of their listeners. Oftentimes, their messages are mere cheerleading sessions designed to give an ego boost to gullible listeners bent on worldly success. The less fortunate are particularly vulnerable to being hoodwinked by purveyors of false hope who tell them that As a child of the Most High God you should be a millionaire, you should own the company, you should have the biggest contract, you should sell the most CD’s. After all, that’s God’s purpose for your life—to be the leader, the head honcho, the big kahuna. That’s your calling. That’s your purpose.

I believe that we go astray when we tie calling and purpose so closely to success, especially if that success is measured by society’s standards. Calling and purpose has to be related to what Joshua calls good success—that’s success based on God’s standard. Success based on God’s standard is derived from two things: pleasing God by obeying his Word, and making God look good. This book addresses primarily the second part of the equation—making God look good. The first part, pleasing God through obedience, is just as important. But volumes have already been written on the topics of holiness and sanctification, and I’m sure many other well-meaning, highly qualified authors will plow that sacred ground again. That is not what this book is about.

I was born into a holiness family and raised in a holiness church. I pastor a holiness congregation, and I am proud to be considered a holiness preacher. God has called us to live holy. But most would agree that we seem to have a hard time doing it. So we need books and preaching and teaching on holiness. But we also need to emphasize making God look good. You may ask, But doesn’t holy living automatically accomplish this? Don’t we achieve everything we need to in terms of making God look good by simply living a holy, set-apart life? The answer is… no.

Living holy pleases God, and we should try to please him in everything we do. But what if you live holy, but nobody ever knows? It sounds strange, but the church is chock-full of undercover Christians, people who keep their proverbial lights under a bushel. They don’t commit any major sins — but they don’t do anything for anybody, either. Does this type of Christianity actually make God look good? Not really. Why? Because it reflects an incomplete, distorted view of what it means to live a life of holiness. It’s so much more than refraining from doing things that the world is doing. While living holy includes a standard of moral uprightness that must be adhered to, that’s not all it is. Perhaps my second book will be about the true meaning of holiness. But that’s more than I can handle in this volume. Suffice it to say that holiness is more than what most of us think about or put into it, and living holy—despite what you have heard—is not the whole duty of man. Another primary duty is to make God look good.

Here’s an example to crystallize the thought. Consider Al, an account executive who does not drink, smoke, or cuss. He is true to his marriage vows and does not even commit adultery in his heart. (You have to be a student of history and presidential politics to appreciate that one.) Al is so straitlaced that he only watches what he calls non-cable TV. Al is considered reliable and trustworthy. His supervisor does not have to worry about him stealing or abusing his expense account. But on the other hand, everybody avoids Al when they can because he’s such a bore. Al is always looking for someone to condemn, something to complain about. When political issues are raised, nobody talks to Al because in his eyes, all politicians are dirty. When others talk about the weekend ballgames, they make sure they discuss it out of the earshot of Al because Al reminds everybody that people bet on games and betting is wrong, you know. In a nutshell, Al is extremely religious and extremely unlikeable. Because people find Al so disgusting, they do not have much use for his God. Yes, it may be said that Al glorifies God with his lifestyle—after all, he doesn’t smoke, drink, or cuss, and that’s what holiness is, isn’t it?—but just how useful is Al for the kingdom? The God we serve is not magnified in the eyes of