God is good--Learning a heart of thankfulness

“God gives God. He withholds no good thing from you. And the good things in life are not so much health, but holiness; not so much riches in this world, but relationship with God; not so much our plans, but His presence—and He withholds no good thing from us because the greatest things aren’t ever things. He doesn’t withhold Jesus from you. Christ is your good, and He is ALL yours, and this always your miracle. No matter the bareness you feel, you can always have as much Jesus as you want.” –Ann Voskamp

This quote hit home so hard for me today, so that I find myself questioning my heart, “Do I amidst my current circumstances, believe God to be good?” I think this is a question we all need to stop every so often to ask ourselves. A false foundation can be laid in believing that we must have an experiential feeling, where everything in our life is lining up for our benefit, to know that God is good. This could only lead us to be people who are experiential adventure seekers, instead of people seeking after the face of God. Oswald Chambers writes a warning of this in his book “My Utmost for His Highest”, “My experience is not what makes redemption real—redemption is reality. The Spirit of God takes me beyond myself and my experiences, and identifies me with Jesus Christ. If I am left only with my personal experiences I am left with something not produced by redemption. Is any experience dearer to you than your Lord? You must allow Him to be Lord over you, and pay no attention to any other experience over which He is not Lord. Be relentlessly hard on yourself if you are in the habit of talking about experiences you have had. Faith based on experiences is not faith; faith based on God’s revealed truth is the only faith there is.”

The reality is that God is good. And He is all I need! When my view of Him becomes skewed I need to come back to the truth of who He is. His goodness is not based off of how He blesses me. God is not good because of the situations He places me in; God is not good because of the people He brings into my life; God is not good because of how I feel; God is not good because of how I look; God is not good when I have money; God is not good when I have a husband; God is not good when my family is settled and taken care of; God is not good because of my excellence; GOD IS GOOD BECAUSE GOD IS GOD! “I will give thanks to your name, O LORD, for it is good.” Psalm 54:6

When I am lacking what I think will make my life better or more fulfilled that does not mean that God is not good. He is my heavenly Father who loves to give good gifts to His beloved children! Matthew 7:9-11 says, “Which of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!”

And Psalm 84:11-12 says, “For the LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD bestows favor [grace] and honor. No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly. O LORD of hosts, blessed is the one who trusts in you!”

Knowing this is who God is when things seem especially hard and it feels like I am facing a season of life like Job--who had everything taken away from him, I need to step back and recall the faithfulness of God in my every moment, because again, His goodness towards me is not based off of my circumstances. It’s time to consider, in the doubts and storms, that “YES, the LORD will give what is good!” (Psalm 85:12) and “Those who seek the LORD lack no good thing.” (Psalm 34:10) Time to get my eyes off of my circumstances and back to Jesus Christ and His righteousness. Can I say like Job, “The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job 1:21)?  And like Job can it be said of me, “In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong” (Job 1:22)? What if when trials and tribulations come my way can I declare like Habakkuk, “Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Jehovah; I will take joy in Elohim of my salvation. Elohim, Adonai, is my strength; He makes my feet like the deer’s; He makes me tread the high places.” (Habakkuk 3:17-19) Habakkuk just declared how terrible is life prospects were looking, and yet he could finish by saying he would take joy in God?! What are we missing today that keeps us from declaring such things as Habakkuk? I’ve been challenged to consider that it is quite possibly the absence of thankfulness in our lives and hearts which creates the difference between people like Job and Habakkuk to people like you and I.