God is good ALWAYS!

The good Doctor used to say that it seemed to take people much spiritual growth before they would believe that God is good always.  The world around us cannot fathom it or conceive of it.  If you notice the media (including social media), you will be deluged with syrupy, pious, platitudes (yes that was a mouthful) explaining in one form or another how God is somehow equally responsible for all the good and bad that happens in a person’s life.   “Oh God wouldn’t bring you to it if He couldn’t bring you through it, brother!”  “That sickness that you are suffering from is just God tempting you brother to see if you will be a better Christian!”  “Well now the Lord works in mysterious ways…”  Earthquakes, disasters that kill thousands of people, tornados…acts of God?  I think not!  Does that make any possible sense to you?  Why would God bring me to some terrible situation just to get me through it?  Who wants to play in that game?  The Bible says, “I am the Lord that healeth thee.”  So, let me get this straight, God actually makes me sick (with the accompanying suffering) so that He can heal me?  Hmmm yeah, makes perfect sense.  Here’s what I’m gonna do tonight.  I’m going to go home and brutally beat my son, then after he is all beaten up I am going to carefully tend to his wounds and explain to him that I only did it to teach him humility.  Helloooo?  Please call the child abuse hotline!  No wait, it gets better.  Why not send a terrible disaster and kill thousands of people because after all maybe they aren’t right with the Lord!  I think common sense logic alone would tell us something is wrong with that picture.  But, when it comes to the things of God we seem to trade in all common sense because God, after all, works in mysterious ways.  All of that thoughtless, rama lama we have had forced down our throats is in reality ignorance, ignorance concerning spiritual matters and ignorance concerning God’s Word (His will).  God does not work in mysterious ways!  God tells us exactly why things happen (good and bad); He tells us exactly what to do about it; and best of all, He tells us who He is and what He does and doesn’t do. 

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge… Hosea 4:6a

My friends, it is what we don’t know that hurts us.  Ignorance is never bliss!  God doesn’t do evil, not in His nature, not going to happen, ever!  God does not need pain and suffering to teach us a lesson, no more than you would use pain and suffering to teach your kids a lesson.  Wouldn’t you rather they just believed what you said before the trouble came?  Don’t you just wish they would heed your advice and not think they always knew better?  Well, such is the human condition.  When the children don’t accept your loving advice they find themselves in the soup.  However, the soup they find themselves in wasn’t put there by God.  In life there is a spiritual competition that rages day by day for the allegiance of men’s minds.  The competition is between God (His Word and His people-via spirit) and the Devil (his words and his people via spirit).  In it’s basic form it is the battle between good and evil.  Evil is alive and well in the world today (and I didn’t need to tell you that).  It is evil that makes people suffer.  It is evil that resulted in people having to die one day (which was never God’s original will).  Every person alive today is in that competition whether they decide to compete or not.  The only WAY you can win in that competition is by having knowledge of God’s Word/will and believing it.  We are all subject to that evil but can overcome it by believing God’s Word.  Without knowledge of God’s Word you will be defeated a lifetime.  I say that not to scare you, but rather to encourage you.  You can overcome but you aren’t going to do it according to your will power, brain power or physical power.   You have to know without a doubt what God says is true and believe without a doubt what God said He will do for you!  Otherwise, this old world is going to feed your mind with more lies than you can count and you will find yourself trying to find “some” good in that tragic event that happened.  Oh maybe some good would be that we learned something, but that’s a helluva price to pay don’t you think?  In order to triumph you gotta be real specific.  Not vague and general, specific in regard to what He says in His Word.  There are over 900 hundred promises in the Word of God, placed there to save you (and me) from that evil that surrounds us.  How many do you know?  Specificity is the key (because the devil really is in the details).

So, with that being said, how does God describe Himself in His Word?  You ready?

This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.  I John 1:5

No darkness at all means….wait for it….no darkness at all!  Yeah but (don’t you hate the yeah butts?) maybe He is working in a mysterious way.  That little piece of bunko, wrongly applied, doesn’t refer to some mysterious way that includes evil.  Rather it refers to the idea that God is hidden, mysterious in that we don’t see everything He does… But you can be sure whatever He does has no darkness in it!  Here’s another:

And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.        I John 4:16

God is what?  Love!  It’s not real loving to send diseases, kill people and cause those of us still here great grief.  Neither is it love to constantly point out our faults and our inadequacies.  Hmmm maybe that isn’t from God either. 

Okay maybe one more —

Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any man:  James 1:13

There it is…I didn’t write the book!  No temptation (in the form of sickness, suffering, trouble, disasters, anxiety, fear, lust etc. etc.) comes from God.  None, nada, not at all.  Instead God is by nature loving, kind, tender-hearted, compassionate, merciful, gracious, wonderful…I could go on.  That’s who God really is and He is reaching out to you! 

Get you some goodness man and stop messing around!