Yes, God is good. Not good as in "He'll make you suffer to teach you something" or "He loves you but..." or "He loves you but sometimes the answer is 'No.'"
I'm talking about really good. Good like you want Him to be, like you long for Him to be...
I know that this is a hard concept to grasp. Culture and religion have told us that He's watching from a distance, that we have to earn His favor, that sometimes He gives and sometimes He takes away.
Get this. God IS love [1 John 4:16]...He doesn't have love, He IS love. He has already blessed with every spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ [Ephesians 1:3], and has placed Himself within every reborn spirit [John 14:23]. We are One Spirit with the Lord [1 Corinthians 6:17] and He's not withholding from Himself.
I think one of the main problems we have trusting God is that we're not really convinced that He is good. How can we, when we believe that He may kill one of our kids, or give us cancer, or blow our house down? Of course, the sages tell us that He is doing these things for our good--to teach us, and that we must gratefully accept every tragedy. But the New Covenant truth is that Jesus is made unto us wisdom [1 Corinthians 1:30] and the anointing which abides in us teaches us all things [1 John 2: 20,27]. It is Jesus--the Word--and the Holy Spirit which teaches us [1 Corinthians 2:12-16]
Jesus made a clear distinction between the Author of good and the author of evil when He said "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly." Bad stuff comes from the thief, and good stuff comes from Him. The literal translation is "...that they may have abundance.." I wonder why it was translated that way--hmmmm, very interesting.
I realize that this may take a paradigm shift. But consider Psalm 84:11,12: 'For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord gives grace and glory; no good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly. O Lord of Hosts, how blessed is the man who trusts in You!' As we've been made the righteousness of God in Christ [2 Corinthians 5:21], that's us!
Abraham
Now we all know that Abraham was tremendously blessed by God. But that was Abraham, you say--he was special to God, and that was the Old Covenant.
Now we all know that Abraham was tremendously blessed by God. But that was Abraham, you say--he was special to God, and that was the Old Covenant.
Yes, that's true. However, Galatians 3 tells us that those who are of faith are blessed with Abraham, the believer, because Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us...'in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to us so that we would receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.' [Galatians 3:14]
The Big Lie
The Big Lie, or at least one of The Big Lies, is that we are separate from Him--He is up there somewhere, looking down, blessing or cursing capriciously, loving us like some kind of cosmic child abuser. Think about it...if any person did the things we accuse Him of, he'd be in jail forever!
The Big Lie, or at least one of The Big Lies, is that we are separate from Him--He is up there somewhere, looking down, blessing or cursing capriciously, loving us like some kind of cosmic child abuser. Think about it...if any person did the things we accuse Him of, he'd be in jail forever!
I realize that some scriptures sound bad...but they must be interpreted in light of the whole Word and the redemptive work of the cross.
This requires a major change in our preconceived beliefs, one of those out-of-the-box thinking experiments. First and foremost, we must believe that we are One Spirit with the Lord, that we have been strengthened with all power in our spirits, and that we have been blessed with all blessing, without any curse.
The more you meditate on the goodness of God, on the love of God, the easier it will be to understand that He had already given us all things richly to enjoy [1 Timothy 6:17].
