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God is Good
By Brian | June 8, 2008
Have you ever really considered the fact that God is good? It’s an expression that we hear a lot, or at least I hear it a lot. In church, conversing with other Christians, wherever. We often hear that God is good. The problem is we often hear it when something good has happened to the person saying it. “Well, the price on that car went down - God is good!” or, maybe, “My kid got a scholarship, God is good!” how about “I just won a million in the lottery, God is good!” We don’t often hear “that root-canal really hurt, God is good!” or “The bank foreclosed on my house, God is good!”
God didn’t change. The circumstances did.
Interestingly, God is good by definition[a]. He is the light[b]. He is goodness personified and the beginning and the end[c]. Why is it that our personal circumstance so often dictates our perceptions, or at least the behavior that we manifest. No, I’m not saying that we can’t be upset by our current situation. Job was upset by his[d]. If you recall, though, Job never stopped having faith in God[e], even as he was pounded by his friends and his wife[f].
This world is constantly in flux. Good things happening, bad things happening, painful things happening. That’s the price we pay to be human. While we certainly can feel badly about this, that, or the other we simply can’t let that circumstance dictate our faith or change the fundamental truths.
Circumstances change all the time. God doesn’t.
Footnotes:
a) Psalm 107:1
b) John 3:19
c) Revelation 1:8
d) Job 31:35
e) Job 13:15
f) Job 2:9
June 8th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Like you wrote, the phrase “God is Good”, can be a rote phrase we may hear and say numerous times without having it really sink in, until life’s unexplainable trials rough up your life. Several years ago, I found Larry Crabb’s book, Moving Through Your Problems Towards FINDING GOD, very helpful in thinking this through. If, as you mentioned, life’s circumstances define who God is, we are all in big trouble. However, if we can truly understand that God is indeed Good, and in fact, always has our good at heart, it can have a radical effect on how we view what happens in our lives, how we should respond, and the victory God wants us to walk in.