The Profitability of Godliness

We tend to hear the word godliness and imagine a list of religious behaviors — things we do to look holy. But godliness is far bigger and far better than that. Godliness is God overtaking every area of your life. It is God filling you until He is manifest in you.

In fact, godliness has a face. The first time it appeared in full, it walked into a world of darkness wearing skin.

And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifested in the flesh.

1 Timothy 3:16 (NKJV)

God was manifested in the flesh so that in our flesh we might manifest God. That is the whole point. Godliness is God taking over and showing Himself through your life. So this is not primarily about what you do. It is about who you become when God takes over.

Godliness is what your life becomes

Read that again, because it changes how you pursue Him. Godliness is not measured in your religious activity. It is measured in what your life becomes when God moves in and takes the wheel. Godliness is what your marriage becomes when God takes over. It is what your children become when God takes over. It is what your business becomes when God takes over.

So the deepest prayer you can pray is not, Lord, help me try harder. It is, God, take over. Take over my life. Take over my home. Take over my work. Come and fill every corner until there is more of You and less of me. That is the pursuit of godliness, and it is the most profitable pursuit in the world — because of what God brings with Him when He comes.

This is why Paul called godliness a great mystery. It cannot be reduced to good behavior, because at its center is a Person moving into a life. The same God who was manifested in flesh in Jesus wants to be manifested in your flesh — in the way you speak to your children, in how you carry yourself at work, in what you become under pressure. And where He takes over, He does not come empty-handed. He brings the very things that make life worth living. Consider two of them.

When God takes over, light comes

The first thing that happens when God takes over is that light overtakes the darkness. Watch it in the ministry of Jesus. He deliberately went and settled in a region the prophets had marked out as a land of deep shadow.

The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and upon those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.

Matthew 4:16 (NKJV)

It is the same movement you see on the very first page of Scripture. Before God spoke, the earth was formless, empty, drowned in darkness.

Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness. God's Spirit brooded like a bird above the watery abyss. God spoke: Light! And light appeared.

Genesis 1:2-3 (MSG)

That is the pattern of God taking over. Wherever there is darkness and confusion, when God shows up, light comes. And light does something specific. Light brings clarity — in the light you finally know what to do and what not to do. Light brings hope, because in the light you can see. The Bible says where there is darkness, there is every evil work; but where there is light, there is life.

Think about how much of our struggle is really just darkness. We do not always need a new circumstance; often we need to see. A person groping in the dark bumps into everything, makes wrong turns, lives braced for the next collision. But turn on the light and the room has not changed at all — only now you can walk it freely. That is what God's coming does on the inside. It does not always remove the problem first. It lets you see, and once you can see, you are no longer at the mercy of what you could not understand.

So if there is an area of your life right now where you feel blind, confused, or stuck in the dark, that is precisely the place to invite God to take over. Where He takes over, the shadow does not win. Light dawns, and with the light comes life.

When God takes over, your soul prospers

The second thing that happens when God takes over is that you gain a prosperous soul. Look at Joseph, a slave in a foreign land, and notice what the text keeps repeating.

And the Lord was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man; and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian. And his master saw that the Lord was with him, and that the Lord made all that he did to prosper in his hand.

Genesis 39:2-3 (KJV)

Joseph had lost everything a man could lose — his family, his home, his freedom. And still he was called a prosperous man, because the Lord was with him. His prosperity was not first in his circumstances. It was in his soul. His life prospered because his soul prospered, and his soul was full because it was full of God.

Think about what a prosperous soul actually is. It is a soul that does not need anything to be happy. It does not need the affirmation of people, the pleasures of this world, money, attention, or applause in order to be full. It is already full of joy, because God has taken over. And a soul like that becomes a generous soul.

Because it lacks nothing, it can give freely — it gives pleasure, it gives honor, it gives good to others without fear. And here is the beautiful thing: because it is always giving, it never runs out. That is why the Lord could make everything Joseph touched prosper, even in a prison. A soul filled with God carries its own weather. It does not depend on the room it is in.

This is the profitability the word godliness is pointing at. Not that God takes over and hands you a pile of things, but that He takes over and you become a person who no longer lives at the mercy of things. The neediness that drives so much of our anxiety, our grasping, our fear of missing out — it quietly loses its grip, because the soul is already full. And a full soul cannot help but overflow onto everyone around it. That is why the master's whole house was blessed for Joseph's sake. When God fills a person, the people near that person get blessed too.

The reward is God Himself

So what do we get out of godliness? What is the profit? Let me put it plainly. Heaven is the result of godliness, not the reward of it. God Himself is the reward of godliness. We do not chase God in order to collect a prize from His hand. He is the prize. When God takes over, you do not merely get His benefits — you get Him, and everything else comes along inside of that.

Now there is one more thing you should know about the road to this kind of life, because it will save you from discouragement. The pathway to godliness runs straight through trial and temptation. Look again at Jesus: He walked out of a fierce wilderness temptation, and it was right after that God took over and the great light dawned. And look at Joseph: right after God began to take over his life, he walked straight into false accusation, betrayal, and prison.

Do not let that frighten you. Joseph was lied about, thrown into a cell, forgotten by the men he had helped, betrayed by his own brothers. And every one of those blows did the same thing in his life — it increased the takeover of God. Trials and temptations are nothing but opportunities to invite God to take over one more room.

So you can face the pressure differently now. Instead of bracing against it in fear, you can almost welcome it and say, bring it on — because the more the enemy brings, the more of my life God gets to fill. That is the profit of godliness: not a life with no storms, but a life so overtaken by God that every storm only pushes Him deeper in.

If you are ready for that, you do not need a complicated formula. Just stand where you are and begin to pray one honest prayer. Lord, come. Take over. Fill me with Yourself until my life becomes godliness. And then keep praying it — over your marriage, your children, your work, your fear, your dark places — until there is more of Him and less of you in every last one.