Believing God is Good No Matter What: Anchored In Goodness

Here is the devotional:

You may have heard it before: life is hard; God is good. This statement is far more than a cliché: it’s a strong and solid theological truth. Some incredibly smart people have wrestled with such questions as, “if God is good, then why does this happen? Why is injustice allowed, and why can life be so hard?” Those really smart people concluded that life is hard AND God is good. One doesn’t cancel out the other. They call it “theodicy.”

Most people assume that because life is hard, God must not be good—but that’s not the case. It’s not an either/or scenario. A few years ago, I decided that even when I couldn’t answer the “why?” part of that statement (“If God is good, then why ____?”), I decided that I would eliminate the “if.” In other words, I choose to believe that God is good . . . no matter what.

You can anchor yourself in God’s goodness too.

Start watching for the goodness of God despite the circumstances. Maybe the door gets closed on one opportunity, but maybe God has something better in store that we have to walk through a different door in order to access it. This has happened so many times in my own life that now I expect it. When something doesn’t go my way, I remind myself of God’s track record and I start watching for the next opportunity that will uncover God’s ultimate plan through the process.

Being anchored in the goodness of God isn’t always going to be a rational thing. It’s a stubborn, unrelenting determination not to let the hardships of life downsize the bigness of God.

Think about it: What are ways you can remind yourself to watch for God’s goodness despite the circumstances?

PRAY: God, thank you for helping me get anchored in your goodness. Give me strength today to stop wondering and start watching for your favor in every situation. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

Here are the scriptures referenced:

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
Romans 8:28 KJV

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These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.
John 16:33 KJV

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Here are Stu’s thoughts:

Allow me set the record straight for everyone. God IS good all the time.

But allow me to also tell you that I have had doubts about God being good in my life before.

God NEVER promised us a easy life for following after his son Jesus! In fact Jesus said it would be quite the opposite!

The prince of this world, the devil, is a thief, liar, and seeks to destroy those who follow after Jesus.

If you have lost your joy, trust me it was not God that took it from you. God is not going to give you joy and then take it away. He doesn’t work like that.

The devil presented something to you and you chose to get upset over it. Then you may have sat on that anger for a bit and then the devil comes back at you with the tricky questions. If God is so good then why did he let that happen?

Just because you became upset over something does not nullify the goodness of God! That took me a while to learn actually.

We all have free will. We can accept Christ. We can deny Christ. We can choose to have joy despite the bad things that come our way or we can become prunes.

I almost broke my left foot today. And even though it stills hurts like hell that does not take away from God’s goodness. He was so good to me today.

I don’t know how I almost broke my foot. it was like one minute everything was fine and then boom out of nowhere I could barely walk. But I still had to work. I almost fell over in pain a few times.

But you see I knew before I left the house today that I would be attacked. Do you remember my statements yesterday about the Redeeming Love movie and my reaction? Yeah, the devil didn’t like that.

And he hit me fairly quickly this morning. I dropped bags of concrete mix off of a pallet for a total of four times. I got orders wrong. I hurt my foot. And with that first bag of concrete mix i was like ok you are going to have to try harder. He did. But you know what? I was still having a good day because of what God did last night and while I was at work.

I was blessed numerous times today but I just can’t say how yet. That may be posted later.

But God was/is/will be good no matter what. It is who he is.

We may get upset because the goodness bestowed upon us may not be exactly what we wanted. But trust me, it was what we needed.