Experience The Goodness Of God

Can’t you see that his kindness is intended to turn you from your sin?

1 Chronicles 16:34 Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good! His faithful love endures forever.

Psalm 23:6 Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will live in the house of the LORD forever.

Romans 2:4  Don’t you see how wonderfully kind, tolerant, and patient God is with you? Does this mean nothing to you? Can’t you see that his kindness is intended to turn you from your sin?

Every one of us has experienced God's goodness in their life to some degree and most of us have experienced a very high level of God's goodness in comparison to thousands of other people that have lived. But despite how good he is God's people always need to be reminded of this fact.

We have a difficult time appreciating the goodness of God, it goes all the way back to the garden of Eden, no matter how good we have it we always think there is more that we should have. Living in the garden was the greatest experience of God's goodness that mankind has ever known but that didn't guarantee the best outcome. 

If Adam and Eve can feel that there is something that they were missing then we are surely guaranteed to doubt the vast amount of God's goodness as well. In our social media world we have the ability to compare ourselves and the stuff that we have with a multitude of other people. We need a way to stay focused when we have the fear of missing out that causes us to doubt God's goodness.

Taste

Psalm 34:8 Taste and see that the LORD is good. Oh, the joys of those who take refuge in him!

To focus on God's goodness you need to taste it and taste it again just like you would taste again and again a delicious food. Don't be satisfied with just the aroma, don't walk by the kitchen and catch a whiff, step in and grab a plate and have a taste!

The joy of tasting is a personal experience, somebody else can help you know a little bit about the taste but you must have your own taste. The flavor is something that you can know only through your own experience. A taste this good should motivate you to taste it again and again.

Trust

Nahum 1:7 The LORD is good, a strong refuge when trouble comes. He is close to those who trust in him.

Thankfully the most powerful being is also the most good! Very few people with power are very kind, if you or I were powerful we would probably do like everybody else and use it for our own advantage, but thankfully the most powerful is perfectly good. 

If the most powerful was any less good we couldn't trust him enough to draw near, we wouldn't have a strong refuge that we can trust and draw close to.

We need to remember that we cannot measure the goodness of God with problem free living. The person with the most trouble in this life may be living the most in God's will. Just like the religious leaders that Jesus rebuked, we cannot accurately discern why they have the trouble so we should not blame them for their situation. Nobody in the Bible was rewarded with an easy life as a reward for obedience.

Isaiah 48:10  I have refined you, but not as silver is refined. Rather, I have refined you in the furnace of suffering.

The goodness of God is always there, even in suffering, our holiness is usually becoming more perfect in difficulty. This is a reality that will change your perspective of "good" and "bad" circemstances. 

How can anything be bad if God is using all things for my good? (Romans 8:28, Hebrews 12:10) We all want the easy life but the most important thing to God is for us to be like him. 

A more difficult truth to accept is maybe the hard time you are going through has nothing to do with you?  Just maybe your country, your church or your family is being disciplined and you are affected by what God is doing in others. How much did good people suffer in the Old Testament because the rest of the group was being punished by God? 

A great example of this is Joseph in an Egyptian prison or Daniel and his friends in Babylon. We focus everything on ourselves but God's story is not all about us.

Treasure

Ephesians 1:7-8  He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins.  8  He has showered his kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding.

To remember God's goodness we need to treasure the most important gift ever! God made the most extravagant purchase ever, what an incredibly high price for such lowly, undeserving creatures.

You may be so kind that you would die for your family or a small group of friends but God showed us perfect kindness by taking his perfect wrath upon himself, through his perfect son. God's awesome goodness could stop there and we should be eternally grateful but there is more goodness coming our way eternally if we accept Jesus sacrifice. (Romans 8:32)

1 John 4:9-10  God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him.  10  This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.

The greatest gift, the one that I really needed the most, is the reason we celebrate Christmas but his arrival was just the beginning of the story of God's plan to destroy the work of Satan so that everything bad can be made good. Don't take his kindness for granted.

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Redeemed And Regretting

It must confuse the world when God's people lose their joy.

Exodus 15:22-24 Then Moses led the people of Israel away from the Red Sea, and they moved out into the desert of Shur. They traveled in this desert for three days without finding any water. 23 When they came to the oasis of Marah, the water was too bitter to drink. So they called the place Marah (which means “bitter”). 24 Then the people complained and turned against Moses. “What are we going to drink?” they demanded.

Exodus 16:1-3 Then the whole community of Israel set out from Elim and journeyed into the wilderness of Sin, between Elim and Mount Sinai. They arrived there on the fifteenth day of the second month, one month after leaving the land of Egypt. 2 There, too, the whole community of Israel complained about Moses and Aaron. 3 “If only the LORD had killed us back in Egypt,” they moaned. “There we sat around pots filled with meat and ate all the bread we wanted. But now you have brought us into this wilderness to starve us all to death.”

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In the previous post we saw that God's people were redeemed and rejoicing as they stood on the banks of the sea that had just swallowed up their enemies. After hundreds of years living in bondage they were redeemed from the kingdom of darkness! 

God's people just got out of church, it was the best worship service ever, they sang the first praise and worship songs ever and nobody complained that they didn't know the song or that the music was too loud. (Exodus 15:1-21) 

But the best worship service ever wasn't enough to stop them from complaining right after church was over. The amazing things that God did for his people were quickly put aside as they left the worship service. 

The people looked at their situation and quickly turned the amazing things that God did for them around so that it was a curse instead of a blessing. They failed to acknowledge that God's goodness is the reason they are out in the wilderness on their way to his next promise. 

The redeemed and rejoicing so quickly became the redeemed and regretting!

Exodus 16:3 “If only the LORD had killed us back in Egypt,” they moaned.

Instead of continuing to praising him they turned into complainers that didn't appreciate what God did for them. They looked back and decided it would be better to be dead back in Egypt than to be dead in the wilderness. 

Say what!?! Either way they would be dead! The fact that they are in the wilderness meant they had experienced God in a bold new way and they should expect that they will see him work for them again. 

Our unmet physical needs are the quickest way to get distracted from what really matters. It is difficult to trust God spiritually when you are doubting that he will provide for you physically. It is easy to see that we need to grow up when our first thought is "What do I get out of this?" rather than "How can I please God in this?"

God Is Sufficient For Our Needs

1. God leads you into places of need so that you will look to Him to meet those needs. 2. When you look to the Lord, you’ll see His grace and glory to be your sufficiency. 3. The manna points to Jesus Christ, the true bread of life that comes down out of heaven to satisfy your soul. 4. You must daily make the effort to lay hold of Christ as bread for your soul. -From "Raining Bread From Heaven" (bible.org)

God allows us to have unmet needs so that we will learn about him and so we can learn something about ourselves as well. God already knows our heart, so when the ultimate heart doctor gives us a test, it is for our benefit. The test result show us things about ourselves that can be shocking to learn.

The worship service shouldn't be an event that is done for a set amount of time, it should be a lifestyle that continues all week long, but God's people lose their joy so quickly that the rest of the world must get really confused. They can't see God's glory in us and long for what we have because most of the time we don't seem to have much that they should desire to have.

God's people often feel that if they just grumble to a close friend that will be discrete with the information then it's okay but they fail to acknowledge that God hears it all. The Bible tells us four times that while the children of God were whining in the wilderness God was listening to their ungrateful attitude and he wasn't pleased. (Exodus 16:7-12)

Exodus 16:7  In the morning you will see the glory of the LORD, because he has heard your complaints, which are against him, not against us. What have we done that you should complain about us?”

Exodus 16:10 And as Aaron spoke to the whole community of Israel, they looked out toward the wilderness. There they could see the awesome glory of the LORD in the cloud.

God used the wilderness experience of Moses to prepare him to lead his people and now the entire nation was going to be in God's wilderness classroom. They would see God's glory just as vividly as Moses did in the burning bush and they would also doubt God just as Moses did. They could see the awesome glory of God but they still couldn't take their eyes off of themselves. 

The people that met Jesus when he came to our world failed just the same. The true daily bread from Heaven miraculously fed thousands from a boy's lunch box and the same people respond to Jesus the next day by focusing on themselves so much that they missed the long awaited Messiah. (John 6:1-71)

We need to appreciate God's goodness toward us even after the emotional high of a big event begins to wear off. We have "crossing the Red Sea" moments in our lives that should change our relationship with God but too often we miss out on truly seeing him, experiencing him and learning from him.

Thank you Lord for your presence in my life! Help me to see your glory in the big moments so that I can learn that you are sufficient for all of my needs. I need to acknowledge that your goodness brought me to this place in life and my wilderness experience is a classroom that I shouldn't complain about.

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Special Babies

When God wants to do something big he usually sends something small.

Isaiah 9:6-7  For a child is born to us, a son is given to us. The government will rest on his shoulders. And he will be called: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.  7  His government and its peace will never end. He will rule with fairness and justice from the throne of his ancestor David for all eternity. The passionate commitment of the LORD of Heaven’s Armies will make this happen!

Galatians 4:4 But when the right time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, subject to the law.

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Most of us have heard that the best gifts come in small packages, we know that the smallest gifts are usually the most valuable, but this is especially true when the small package is a baby. We are usually drawn toward the baby with a desire to nurture it, protect it and celebrate it.

Unfortunately there have been too many babies that have been anything but good news and they have not been treasured as a gift from God. We will never know how much good may have been accomplished by a baby that was unwanted and therefore it was unprotected. 

The Bible has a lot of stories about babies that were sent to do something special. I cannot imagine how different the world would be if any of these babies had been destroyed.

Special babies that were sent by God:

• Moses - Born under an evil dictator that sought to kill every Jewish baby. His life had to be preserved so that 80 years later he would rescue God's people.
• Samuel - A barren mother promises to give her child to God, the baby grows up in the temple, and he becomes Israel's first prophet.
• John the Baptist - Elderly parents that are unable to have a child, his dad's unbelief caused him to be unable to speak, Jesus says he is the greatest man.
• Jesus - Virgin birth, born under an evil dictator that sought to kill him, called out of Egypt, came to be the perfect Passover lamb.

One of the most difficult things to understand is why God loves to send a baby to do a man's job. Why can't a full grown man arrive on the scene and take care of things right away? We want someone with strength, know how and determination but God prefers to send someone that doesn't even know that we need him yet.

God's special babies come in his timing to unlikely moms. The proof that God is in control can be seen many times by using ladies that couldn't get pregnant for a long time. Many of the important mom's in the Bible were barren until God was ready to send the special baby that his people needed.

Waiting for God's special babies to be born is difficult, but then when they finally arrive they are vulnerable and must be protected, then they have to grow up physically and then sometimes God still doesn't use them until they are old and they have had time to grow up spiritually.

Meanwhile generations of God's people live and die without seeing God's mercy and generations of worldly people live and die without seeing God's judgment. That's what happened in Moses' day, the Canaanites continued to live in sin without suffering the consequences that God promised would come someday and God's people suffered and many of them died in Egypt without the fulfillment of the promise to save them.

1 John 4:14-15  Furthermore, we have seen with our own eyes and now testify that the Father sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.  15  All who declare that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God.

It doesn't seem fair to us, God doesn't satisfy our desire to fix things right away, all of Israel waited for hundreds of years for the greatest baby that was ever promised. Meanwhile it seemed that God wasn't paying attention or he didn't care. 

Our idea of being in control doesn't look like God's, he was aware of our plight and he was still on track with his original plan to send his son to be "God with us." In the midst of the chaos of political and economic woes he sent Jesus as a baby to eventually grow up to be the man that would save us.

The day is coming when "God with us" will happen again, God will send his son back to earth, but don't expect him to be the sweet baby that they saw the first time and don't expect him to be a humble servant either. 

We all need to learn about the greatest gift ever that comes through Jesus but the only way to experience a gift is to receive it. Have you received the only gift that can give you peace with God?

A Heart Of Thanks: Even When Life Is Difficult

The wilderness is for my own good so I should be thankful for it.

 

Psalms 95:1-11 Come, let us sing to the LORD! Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation. 2 Let us come to Him with thanksgiving. Let us sing psalms of praise to Him.

3 For the LORD is a great God, a great King above all gods. 4 He holds in His hands the depths of the earth and the mightiest mountains. 5 The sea belongs to Him, for He made it. His hands formed the dry land, too.

6 Come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the LORD our maker, 7 for He is our God. We are the people He watches over, the flock under His care. If only you would listen to His voice today!

8 The LORD says, "Don't harden your hearts as Israel did at Meribah, as they did at Massah in the wilderness. 9 For there your ancestors tested and tried My patience, even though they saw everything I did.

10 For forty years I was angry with them, and I said, 'They are a people whose hearts turn away from Me. They refuse to do what I tell them.' 11 So in My anger I took an oath: 'They will never enter My place of rest.'"

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When we think about all of the reasons we have to be thankful, we should go to God and give him praise and worship, if we consider just a fraction of what he has done the praise and worship should be unrestrained.

Maybe that isn't your experience right now, you know he deserves it but you are wondering around in the desert and your feelings are just not there. You are in a situation that you don't want to be thankful for.

Our number one desire here in the United States is to be comfortable, more money, better health, a house full of stuff and we are happy. The only problem with that way of thinking is that it isn't God's number one desire for you.

We like to pray for him to close doors that we shouldn't go through but what if he closed that door to test your faith? Do we really believe that God is in control when things happen?

God's number one desire for you is to make you holy, he is the master gardener that prunes his vine to make it more productive, pruning doesn't feel good but growth usually comes in the most difficult moments.

We are just like God's children in the wilderness, we have been brought out of slavery, we have witnessed unexplained miracles but at the moment we are out in a desert and the last thing we want to do is thank God for this situation.

We need to see God's presence in even the most difficult times and realize that sometimes he strategically puts us where we would never choose to go. 

Have you considered the reality that Jesus knew the weather forecast and he still put his disciples in a boat on two different occasions? 

Why would God ask Jonah to go start a revival in enemy territory? 

Why would faithful men have to make a stand for their beliefs and get thrown into a furnace?

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 Always be joyful. 17 Never stop praying. 18 Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.

When everything is going our way we take prosperity and comfort for granted but when things get tough we realize that we are powerless to control our circumstances. If you begin to see that everything you have and everything you have counted on can disappear in a second then it becomes much harder to take it for granted.

A heart of thanks can help you persevere when stress and heartache come upon us. You can focus on the current situation and forget about the past experiences that we have already come through. God brought you through yesterday, last month and last year when you thought things were so bad so why won't he do it again?

Lord help me to remember that you are in control and that I should not look at the people and circumstances around me and blame them for interrupting my plans to be comfortable. Thank you for loving me enough to die for me and for using any means necessary to help me grow.

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From Comfortable To Cursed

Our difficult times increase our longing to live in a better place.

Genesis 47:4-6  We have come to live here in Egypt for a while, for there is no pasture for our flocks in Canaan. The famine is very severe there. So please, we request permission to live in the region of Goshen.”  

5  Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Now that your father and brothers have joined you here,  6  choose any place in the entire land of Egypt for them to live. Give them the best land of Egypt. Let them live in the region of Goshen. And if any of them have special skills, put them in charge of my livestock, too.”

Genesis 47:11-12  So Joseph assigned the best land of Egypt—the region of Rameses—to his father and his brothers, and he settled them there, just as Pharaoh had commanded.  12  And Joseph provided food for his father and his brothers in amounts appropriate to the number of their dependents, including the smallest children.

Exodus 1:8  Eventually, a new king came to power in Egypt who knew nothing about Joseph or what he had done.

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Nobody wanted a rescue when they first got to Egypt, why would they want to, they just got rescued from the famine in Canaan. Life has been good ever since Joseph saved them from the famine and now they have been living in the best area of Egypt, their livestock were in the best pastures and their families were well fed. But God would soon make sure that they were not comfortable there forever. 

There is a new Pharaoh in town and he isn't as smart as the previous one. The previous one was impressed with the God given wisdom of Joseph but the new man didn't know anything about Joseph or about his God. Just as Joseph was unfairly forced into slavery, now his ancestors have been unfairly put in the same situation.

Pharaoh feared what the Canaanites should have feared. If Pharaoh knew the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob he would have realized that the land that God's people were supposed to take away from it's current residents was not Egypt. The promised land that they would conquer is the place where the Canaanites currently reside.

Pharaoh attempted to shorten the life expectancy and slowdown the birthrate of God's people through slave labor and infanticide seemed like a wise plan but he didn't achieve the intended results. God's people continued to increase despite the harsh treatment.

Pharaoh assumed that he was in charge and that his plans would have the desired outcome. Man's wisdom is wrong so much of the time that we should be very careful. Sometimes God allows the wisdom of evil men to prevail for a long time before he steps in and proves who is really in charge.

Pharaoh's plans were used by God to create a desire to live in a better country Pharaoh didn't have any idea that God would use the persecution to create a longing within his people to live free in the land that was promised to their father Abraham. (Hebrews11:13-16)

God's people need a rescue but their leader that will take them out of bondage isn't even born yet. God's people don't have any idea that they are waiting for a slow plan that will allow them to suffer for many years as they wait for their deliverer.

God's rescuer will come as a baby, babies have to grow up, which means they have to be protected from the plans of evil rulers. Ironically, instead of being killed by the evil ruler, this baby would be protected and become a member of the family of the man that wanted him killed.

God’s grace and sovereignty made a way for Moses’ mother to nurse her own baby, get paid for it, and guarantee that the baby would not be killed. God put Pharaoh's daughter in the right place at the right time and gave her the compassion to care for Moses.

God's rescuer will have to be prepared, he will have to grow up physically and spiritually, he will need time to learn from the mistake of following man's wisdom, and he will have to go to God's classroom in the wilderness to learn godly wisdom.

2 Peter 3:8 But you must not forget this one thing, dear friends: A day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day.

God isn't concerned with our clocks or calendars, God's people have always been in God's waiting room, he almost always moves much slower than we want. Our faith gets stronger when we don't get instant answers to our prayer request.

God's glory shines the brightest when it looks like the desired outcome is completely impossible. Very often he allows our situation to get as bad as possible before it looks like he is reacting and then he reacts in a small way that doesn't even seem to help. 

Isaiah 64:4 For since the world began, no ear has heard and no eye has seen a God like you, who works for those who wait for him!

God is at work and he is competent and faithful to complete what he has promised. Life is hard but how much desire would we have for a deliverer if we lived in comfort all the time?

It is difficult to understand how God could be merciful to the Canaanites and hold back his judgment on them while his people lost favor with the world around them which resulted in them being persecuted. The world doesn't tolerate us as well as it used to, the church is being persecuted more and more while God delays in delivering us from this evil world.

All of the difficult times remind us that we are not home yet. Our trials increase our longing to live in a better place, a place without bondage to sin, a place with justice for all, a place where we will fully know God and enjoy the rest of his promises that we have not received yet. 

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Exalted By God

God's favorite people to use are usually the most unlikely.

Genesis 41:37-40 Joseph’s suggestions were well received by Pharaoh and his officials. 38 So Pharaoh asked his officials, “Can we find anyone else like this man so obviously filled with the spirit of God?”

39 Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Since God has revealed the meaning of the dreams to you, clearly no one else is as intelligent or wise as you are. 40 You will be in charge of my court, and all my people will take orders from you. Only I, sitting on my throne, will have a rank higher than yours.”

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Most of us can relate to the story of Joseph, we have all been loved and yet also hated and just like Joseph it seems like hate is winning most of the time. When Joseph's story begins he is the favorite son and he has prophecies from God predicting his great destiny but then his brothers hatred for him begins a long downward spiral.

Everything looks good until he is betrayed by his brothers, first they want to kill him but then they decide to sell him for the price of a slave, it is the first of three times that Joseph is betrayed, after his brothers it would be Potiphar's wife and then the cup bearer.  They all seemed to have their own agenda and Joseph wasn't included. 

This story bothers us but it is a great lesson for us to remember in our life story. We like to think that good things happen to good people but from the very first book of the Bible God shows us that it doesn't work that way. The Bible proves to us that when things don't go as easy as we want them too, that is a good thing that God has sent your way, the school of faith has opened and you have been enrolled. 

Joseph is just as blind as Job was to the reasons for his miserable suffering, the Book of Job tells us that Job is "blameless— a man of complete integrity. He feared God and stayed away from evil" but that isn't enough to ensure that Job would live without trouble and as good as Joseph is he also had his share of problems.

Just like Job, Joseph probably wasn't aware that God was using him to bring him glory even when it looked like he didn't even have the favor of God. Joseph was down and out without any explanation from God for 22 years, he could have assumed by his circumstances that God didn't like him and his visions of greatness were just crazy dreams. (Genesis 37:1-11)

God brings his own promise to the brink of failure, only to show that he has been in charge all along.

-John Piper

It is easy to forget that God's favorite people to use are the ones that seem to be the least likely. The world will tear you down and remind you of why you can't be used by God but his normal way of doing things is usually to allow things to look impossible so that when he steps in we are reminded that he is in control. God is looking past your hurts, habits and hang-ups to surprise everybody for his glory.

Genesis 50:19-20 But Joseph replied, “Don’t be afraid of me. Am I God, that I can punish you? 20 You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good. He brought me to this position so I could save the lives of many people.

Joseph gives us a glimpse of Jesus thousands of years before the prophecy of his birth was fulfilled. They both forgave those that wronged them, they were exalted after suffering and their suffering was the vehicle that God used to save his people.

God was not surprised by the evil that happened in Joseph's life, God wasn't caught off guard and think to himself "how can I use that for good," God is in control of everything and it is all being used by God for his purpose. 

God may leave me in the dark about what he is doing but that's okay. I know that he can be trusted with every detail of my life knowing that it will all be used for his glory and for my good. Part of him receiving glory is found in the work of making me into a new, exalted creation that looks more like him as I study his word and apply it to my life. (Romans 8:29-30)

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