God Is Good.

"God is good, all the time, and all the time, God is good."

If you spend even a short amount of time in Christian circles, you are bound to hear this phrase multiple times.  I myself have said it more times than I can count.  We use it to encourage people.  We use it to remind people about God's character.  We turn it into a cute little song and sing it in our Sunday schools.  We proclaim it from the pulpit and put it on our social media accounts in pretty little memes.  And we truly do mean it every time.  Because it is true.  It always has been and always will be a fact.  God is good.  We KNOW this to be true.  But what about when we don't FEEL it is true?

A few years back I had a conversation with someone about how it bothered him when people put #blessed on their Facebook or Twitter posts.  Why did it bother him?  Because people only seem to say they are #blessed when things are going their way.

"Got a promotion at work today!" #blessed
"Proud to introduce our new baby to the world." #blessed
"We have purchased a new home! " #blessed
"Just spent the day with the whole extended family!" #blessed

All these things are wonderful and are a real blessing.  But what about when times are hard?  What about when things go completely opposite of our dreams and wishes?  Does that mean that we aren't blessed then?  Rarely, if ever, do you see the hashtag used like this:

"Lost my job today." #blessed
"Was just confirmed - cancer has returned for the third time."  #blessed
"Whole family is fighting so no one is going to spend the holidays together." #blessed
"Can't pay any of our bills this month.  Electricity was turned off." #blessed

No, we never really see that.  Because when "bad" things are happening, we don't FEEL that we are blessed.  We don't feel that God is being good to us.

I'll be honest with you here - I haven't "felt" very blessed these past several months.  Absolutely nothing has gone the way I wanted it to go, or even thought it would go.  Life has been hard and I frankly have not felt the Lord's blessing on my life.  I've honestly questioned God's goodness to me.

Ah, but here's the rub.  God's goodness is not dependent on our circumstances.  His goodness is not measured by our feelings of being blessed.  Our feelings are fickle.  They are ever changing.  One day we can love purple, and the next day we can hate it.  Things we felt when we were younger changed as we got older.  Feelings are not to be trusted.

That's why, when it comes to love and marriage, we say that love is a choice and not a feeling.  Because if we based our marriage on how we feel (and many people do), then that marriage is not going to last.  Anyone who has been married for more than a year will tell you that if they were honest, there has been a time that they didn't really FEEL like loving their spouse.  But they choose to love them instead.

And that's what we need to remember when it comes to God being good to us.  These past eight months have put my emotions on a ridiculous roller coaster.  I've been happy, sad, angry, scared, hurt, depressed, excited, and disappointed.  I've felt each of these things multiple times - sometimes even in one day! It's been hard to clearly see God's goodness and blessing.  I have to choose to not trust my feelings, but rather, trust what I know to be true.  It doesn't take a lot of searching in the Bible to see that God is good:

               Psalm 34:8 "Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!
                 Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!"

               Psalm 100:5 "For the Lord is good; his steadfast love
                 endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations."

               Psalm 27:13-14 "I believe that I shall look upon the goodness
                 of the Lord in the land of the living!  Wait for the Lord; be strong,
                 and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!

               Psalm 119:68 "You are good and do good; teach me your statutes."

These are just a few verses from one book in the Bible that talks about His goodness.  There are multitudes more.

When we enter into difficult times, we cannot rely on our feelings to guide us.  We must choose to depend are what we know to be true.  That God IS good.

So how do we understand this when we don't feel it?  We believe that God is good.  We know it to be true.  But that doesn't always help us to understand why these hard trials come.  How can a good God let these things happen?  It's simple, really.

Our idea of "good" is not always God's idea of "good."   In reality, they are often very very different.  And why is this?  Because He is God.  He knows all.  He sees all.  He knows the beginning and the end - the whole picture.  And because He sees this, He allows certain things into our lives to complete the picture.

Think of a jigsaw puzzle.  When the puzzle is all apart in the box, it doesn't make any sense.  We pick up one piece and it doesn't look like much.  If anything, it looks like just a blur of colour.  We can't make out what the picture is to be.  But when it is all put together, it then becomes a beautiful picture where all the pieces fit perfectly and we know just what it all is supposed to be.  It makes sense.  That's how we need to look at our life.  We only see each day, each moment at a time.  It can be confusing and hard to understand.  But we are only looking at pieces, whereas God sees the whole picture.  He is not confused.  He understands.

Not only does He see the whole puzzle, He is the one who MADE the puzzle.  He knows exactly how everything fits together.  What doesn't seem to fit in our eyes makes perfect sense in His.  And while this fact doesn't necessarily make our hard times easier to go through, it can give us a peace that everything is fitting together just as it should.

We don't always feel that God is good.  We don't always feel like proclaiming that we are #blessed.  But we have to hold fast to the promises found in scripture that God IS good, and remind ourselves that His definition of "good" is often very different than ours.  And that's a good thing, since He sees the end scenario and we only see the here and now.
We may not see the blessings right away, (hence the term "blessings in disguise").   In reality, it may not be until the end of our life when we can look back and say, "Yes, now I see.  God was so good to allow those circumstances into my life!  I really am #blessed!"

And even if we aren't able to look back and perfectly see how it all fit together, God is still good.  We are still #blessed.  But....that bring us to a whole other post. 😉