The Goodness of God

"God is so good
God is so good
God is so good, He's so good to me"
Veggie Tales

There are two things that I have been running into lately in the messages I have been hearing and the literature I have been reading, over and over again. One is healing from affliction. I think perhaps that I have done that subject as a central point enough justice for the time being, at least pertaining to how it is working in my own life, though it always seems to weave its way into all of life in subtle ways nonetheless. The other is God's goodness.

This July 4 weekend I have had the uplifting and wrenching experience of reading The Shack, the literary sensation that is literally shaking both the Christian and secular world's concepts of God, grief, and how the two are intertwined in ways we still are often at a loss to explain. The book has certainly generated a lot of heated controversy with its sometimes unorthodox portrayals of the Godhead and a few statements here and there. But I personally think, in just my own imperfect opinion, that a lot of these theologian-critics are blowing a lot of hot air and completely missing the point by light-years. This book is not theology, apologetics or eschatology, people. This book instead has one awesomely, incredibly, enormously powerful theme to it that is what draws people, saved and unsaved, to it; THE GOODNESS OF GOD. Specifically, the goodness of God right in the very center of the most hideously, agonizingly awful circumstances a man can find himself in. Folks, this is the same goodness, kindness and love of God that drew men, women and children to CHRIST HIMSELF when he walked this earth, and that still draws us today. His goodness is something that seems glossed over in our hurried pursuit of "spiritual maturity" so many times. But God has ways of grinding that pursuit to a halt and focusing us back on that goodness, in His own loving way, as I have lately found.

I must say that in the past several months I have come to a greater appreciation of His goodness than I have in my entire Christian walk. I have come to see, gradually, as if emerging from a cloud, that His goodness is so astronomically enormous that it can overcome the fiercest evil and the deepest sadness that the Enemy and the world can muster.But it's how God in His goodness overcomes those things that baffles us so many times. One phrase from Zechariah sums it up fairly well: "Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,' says the LORD Almighty". In my own life, particularly recently, it has never been by violence of either the physical or the emotional kind, nor by the assertion of my rightness in a matter or my justification in feeling a certain way, that has brought me respite from dark pain, but His Spirit flooding me with His goodness and dispelling any thoughts of getting even or feeling self-vindicated. When we are washed over with the goodness of God we no longer need to seek revenge or get someone back for an injury, nor dwell on unkind thoughts towards another or pitying thoughts for ourselves. Our self-will and self-seeking dissolve into the glory of His presence, and the cross of the moment becomes, while still painful, not as agonizing as it was when we struggled against it.

Now, when many believers hear talk about the goodness of God, they may give a great ho-hum and say "yeah, that's just baby Christianity. We need to talk more about the Cross, and about prayer, and about the church, and about evangelism", etc .etc. I must admit that was my reaction some time ago. But allow me to give the strongest possible refutation of that point of view. People, when you are as I was about 5 weeks ago, in the darkest cave you can imagine, in the most exquisite emotional pain possible, feeling like you have been speared multiple times, like the night will never end, NONE of the teachings about the Cross, prayer, evangelism, church, healing, etc. are of even the most remote value to you. One thing, and one thing only, will hold your shattered heart together; the knowledge, not head knowledge but INNER knowledge, that your Lord is good. That His goodness is greater than your pain, than your sin, than your ignorance, than your weakness. During three times in my life in particular I came to know this fact EXPERIENTIALLY: the first breakup with my ex-fiancee in 1996, my ten days of agony in the hospital in 2005, and the second breakup just this past May. It is in times like this that is is ESSENTIAL that we know that our Lord is good, and, knowing so, cling, by our fingernails if necessary, to that deep knowing in our spirit man of His goodness. And then when, like I did, we go home from the hospital and recuperate, or gradually get over that relationship, when we get to the other side of the valley, we look back and see with an incredible crystalline clarity the enormously powerful and blindingly glorious goodness of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Most of us know the verses speaking of His goodness:

"Taste and see that the Lord is good"
"For I know the plans I have for you; plans to prosper you and not to harm you"
"The Lord is good; His mercy endures forever"
For God causes all things to work together for the good"...
"I am the Good Shepherd"

But how many of us really, really BELIEVE it? I mean, believe it so deeply that nothing life throws at you can shake that belief and that faith? Folks, this is anything but "baby Christianity". This is the very cornerstone of our relationship with our Father. If we cannot believe that He is good, then everything else we might believe or know about Him collapses. All our brilliant theology, our "adult" understanding of prayer, church, the bible, etc. is just dust without the firm foundation of an unshakeable faith in His love and His goodness. It is His goodness that drove Him to love us so much that He went to a bloody cross for us, when we were completely unworthy of such love. His love and His goodness are absolutely inseparable. If you ask any battle-scarred veteran of the faith, like a Paul or a Watchman Nee or a Billy Graham, just how important the goodness of God is to their walk and where they are in God, I am sure that they would tell you it was their very lifeline to the Lord; the one promise that they could bank on with all that they were and had. So much for baby Christianity. I can say, having finally had some of the doubt about this matter removed from my own heart and spirit, what a real jump-up-and-down Hallelujah moment it is to be able to "taste and see that the Lord is good". Not just by hearing about it, reading about it, learning about it, but LIVING IT. And so, when we are back on the mountaintop, out of the darkness into the Light again, we see it and enjoy it and celebrate it all the more, because we see....His goodness. Like Paul, after a while, we can see it in ANY circumstance, wonderful or awful. It becomes a constant; a given; a part of who we are in Him. And, best of all, it becomes part of what we pour out to others when we speak of our Lord to a hurting world and our hurting brothers and sisters. It becomes part of our expression of Him, and, therefore, a truer and more authentic expression. His goodness becomes our joy becomes others' joy, and back again to Him, in the endless cycle of holy, living water flowing from Him to us and back. May we KNOW His goodness in our deepest inner being and shed it abroad.

Peace in Him,
Tom Sebring