Like the worship song implies, God can and should be praised all day long for His goodness. But do we? I fall short time after time to give God the praise and worship I know He is worthy to receive. I ignore Him, go my own way, and simply disobey far more often than I’d like to admit. My own lack of surrender is heavy on my heart today. I have touched on the topic of goodness in previous posts such as Human Goodness, and The Profound Sufficiency of Christ, but today, God’s goodness is front and center.
Life with God does not mean we will feel happy all the time. It involves feeling the pain of life when God feels far away, when prayers feel blocked, or when the weight of conviction feels suffocating. It’s all part of it. Life with God is not easy. Because of God’s goodness, however, we can still take heart! “I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord” (Psalm 27:13-14).
In Psalm 23, David pours out a song to God that ends with the promise of God’s goodness: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever” (Psalm 23:6). Goodness is what comes of walking with God like a sheep with their shepherd. If we’re the sheep, we just don’t do so well when separated from our shepherd. We need God, and when we walk with Him through our lives, we experience His goodness.
Goodness is a characteristic of God. God is the embodiment of goodness; Scripture reveals that throughout history, He seeks and works things out for the best for everyone. He is kind to us when we have been unkind, merciful to us when we haven’t shown mercy, and faithful to us when we haven’t been faithful in our devotion to Him, all because He is so incredibly, miraculously, unfathomably good! He gives us His abundant goodness because that is who He is–loving and generous and faithful to give us many chances to turn to Him and come into agreement with the way He made us and the purpose for His creation. His best for us is realized when we choose Him as our Shepherd. In His great goodness, He wants the best for us. He wants us to be His because being under His care is where we thrive best.
On the days we feel heavy with the weight of our human limitations, it’s often because we’re paying too much attention to ourselves, instead of God. What would happen if we focused on Jesus instead? What good would it do our hearts to imagine Jesus sitting next to us, no words needed, just His eyes looking into ours with His loving goodness, without any condemnation (Romans 8:1)?
He does not want us to sit long in the heaviness of our own shortcomings. He invites us to simply and humbly accept that He paid for it on the cross. What profound goodness is found in this! His blood is sufficient, and our debt is paid. In these days when I glimpse the depths I’ve been saved from, I appreciate His goodness all the more fully and deeply. He is the only place we find refuge from our sin. “But my eyes are toward you, O God, my Lord; in you I seek refuge; leave me not defenseless!” (Psalm 141:8) What a good Father God is, that He is a place of refuge from all the heaviness, shame, and sin that would seek to destroy us.
May we fix our eyes on His goodness, and may we be open to receive the great goodness of God in our lives and hearts today. Amen.
“I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living” (Psalm 27:13).
“For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all“(Romans 11:32).
“What shall I return to the Lord for all his goodness to me?” (Psalm 116:12).
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