We need to get a grip on the goodness of God. To allow the truth of God’s utter perfect goodness to transform us in our thinking and living and fighting sin and following Jesus. We need to help one another see again and again the goodness of God so that we see temptation and sin for what it is; a lie, or a twisting of what is good to perverse ends.
That’s the question. And it’s the question behind so many of our questions. We are tempted to believe the lie that God is not good because he hasn’t given me this or that or the other. God isn’t good because his kingdom doesn’t fit with my kingdom. Or he isn’t good because of these circumstances, or this suffering, or … fill in the blank.
Is God good? It’s the original question that sinks its fangs into us every time. It’s the question behind so many pastoral struggles and discipling issues. A failure to believe that God is good and good all the time is behind the unhappy marriage with it’s dreams of, or talk of, separation and divorce. It is at the root of envy of others, the nagging ‘if only’, the taking of something for ourselves even though our good God as an expression of his love says don’t. It’s why so many fall away tempted the promise of good in created things rather than in the fountain of that goodness in the God who is good.
It’s a question we face again and again in varied situations all day. Is God good? Is his word good?