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God is Good! Do we see it? ...

Thursday, Oct 16, 2014. God is good! The Lord is great! Are you with me? Do we really see how good and great the eternal God is, day by day, eternity for eternity? We struggle in our life, with various difficulties. We see the enormous crimes which humans do day by day. How does it fit together with the goodness of God? Do we see it? Do we experience it?

Our Experience? …

Let us ask some straight questions! Do we see the goodness of the Lord? And: do we experience his goodness? First we need to note: God is giving good things to all people, god or bad, faithful or non-faithful, full of faith or with a secular attitude. He loves them all, he wants to be good to them all. So we all experience some part of his goodness, all of us - what ever we believe! We have talked about the riches of mankind. We all have fantastic riches at our hand. We are a fantastic treasure ourselves. That is good indeed.

We also have our challenges. Mankind has a lot of plagues. We all experience some diseases, like Ebola currently flooding our planet. There are the terror regimes here and there, humans who impose pain and fear onto others. The world is not what God wants it to be. It is in a process of being renewed, but the process is not yet finished! We are not at the end …

When we do not know God, we can not see how good he is. When we do not approach him, when we do not ask, we cannot get an answer. When we do not pray, we do not get! Even if we pray we might not get, since he does not want us to misuse him. He is the souvereign God, who knows much better what is god and bad for us than we usually do!

Guidance …

There are many things you can find when it comes to the goodness of God - and to reasons for praise and joyfulness. Let us pick one: his guidance in this world is just fantastic. It is unconventional - still today after 2000 years of Christianity. It is faultless. It is deep and breathtaking. Let us read his guidance for us as it is written in Romans, Chapter 12:

9 Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. 10 Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. 11 Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit,7 serve the Lord. 12 Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. 13 Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. 14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. 16 Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly.8 Never be wise in your own sight. 17 Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. 18 If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 19 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” 20 To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12)

In the middle of our good and our bad experiences, God tells us how he wants us to approach all this. He tells us how he wants us to approach teh difficult things. He tells us how he wants to approach us relationships with one another. It is not that we do all this already! It is not that we would be able to do it right away. It is a long path of change which is ahead of us. We have just started. Even after 20 years of discipleship and faith in Christ you will probably realize even better that you are just at the beginning.

But it is a fantastic journey. That is also good: to be on this journey. To be taken into the kingdom of heaven. To be fed with pure water, with the holy spirit of the Lord, with guidance and his support to follow his path, day by day! Come and believe, and find deep joy coming from him … (Roland Potthast) ... more texts