"[What would have become of me] had I not believed that I would see the Lord's goodness in the land of the living!" Psalms 27:13
God's goodness and knowing it was something that I never thought of before until my freshman year of college. I searched and desired to understand God's goodness for months. It has been one of my most exciting love affairs with Jesus even up until now. I have no idea how I came about it searching for it, I just remember one day realizing that I needed, rather desperately, something more from Jesus. I realized that if I wanted to live my life on a more exciting level I needed to know Him better, in a whole new way, it was like I was starving but there was only one thing that would save me and that was His goodness.
"And Moses said, I beseech You, show me Your glory. And God said, I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim My name, THE LORD, before you, for I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show show mercy and loving-kindness on whom I will show mercy and loving kindness." Exodus 33:18-19
God's goodness is His glory. I want to say that Beth Moore in her book Breaking Free fully explores God's glory, but I cannot say that is true because I do not believe God's glory can be fully explained. Beth shows us a glimpse of her understanding of God's glory according to God's word. She shows us in 2 Peter 1:3 how glory can be applied to our lives, "His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness." Beth Moore says "His glory supplies our needs" and "Christ is the representation of God's glory". It is our knowledge of Christ and His character that helps us live our lives the way they were designed to be lived. We obtain knowledge by experience, by experiencing God's word in our lives daily, by asking God to show himself in our lives, and by living out what he says in the Bible.
So knowing God's goodness and recognizing how Jesus lived out goodness in His own life gives us a whole new picture of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. As I like to say, it gives us a whole new rock to stand on! Realizing that God is good helps us to trust God and give our life completely to Him. Goodness inspires hope, and hope inspires faith, and faith inspires a life worth living and a relationship with God worth telling other people about. Faith is what you use to live out the dreams, passions, hopes, and desires God has given you. Faith is what gives you the ability to be radically adventurous and crazy for Jesus. Faith is what helps you fall into who God designed you to be. Faith is the energy behind the risks God wants you to take in life. Faith is what helps you fall hopelessly head over heels in love with LOVE Himself.
God's goodness reveals to us that He really is a God that we can trust fully. God's goodness reveals to us that everything that keeps us from really trusting in Him is just folly and usually just fear.
When I fully came to know God's goodness I was on a family vacation in Cairns, Australia. Now Cairns is the gateway to the great barrier reef, surrounded by rain forest, and we just happened to rent a house just behind the spa paradise of the world on the most beautiful beach I have ever seen. It was fantastically beautiful, romantic, relaxing, and everything I wanted Australia to be. I specifically remember lying in bed with Mimi (my Dad's Mom) unable to sleep because the Lord was bugging me. I realized that I did not fully trust him because there were certain life long fears I had about my life that I was holding on to. I thought that if I truly gave my life over to the Lord for his own doing that my worst fears would come true. As I lay there thinking that the Lord whispered to me, "I do not give passion with out purpose". Now, I have to interrupt myself to tell you that I was already a Christian who really loved Jesus, what I am talking about is truly surrendering yourself to Him. So, as God was showing me that the things that I wanted most in my life were a lot of the time desires that He has given me! How simple, how comforting was that thought to me!! God really wanted me to have joy and wanted me to live an exciting life for Him! Yet, I still desperately needed to know His goodness.
It was not until the end of the vacation that the Lord showed it to me. For quite a few days I had felt a strong urging to go and sit on the beach by myself, but for some reason I was afraid to go. One day I went to the Internet cafe to do some emailing and on the way back to the house I decided to go sit on the beach an talk to Jesus - even if it was in front of a bunch of people. Believe or not that was a really hard decision for me, because something in me knew that God was doing something and that scared me just a little bit. As I sat down on the beach the most incredibly awesome love swept over me, and God gave me a wonderful picture of who He was. It was like He deposited His goodness in me. It was so simple and not complicated but from that moment on I trusted Him in a way that I never had before. It was awesome and my life has been different ever since!
So....
Right now I am reading Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis, which is his own autobiography. Lewis was an atheist who spent his younger years desperately searching for joy - not just any joy but joy everlasting. He was an avid reader as I am sure most of you can imagine, but it was one day while waiting for the train that he picked up a book by George MacDonald that gave Lewis a taste of God's goodness. It was this little hint of God that I sure was hidden deep in a great story - Phantases, a Faerie Romance - that caused Lewis's hard heart towards God to soften just a little.
So knowing God's goodness and recognizing how Jesus lived out goodness in His own life gives us a whole new picture of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. As I like to say, it gives us a whole new rock to stand on! Realizing that God is good helps us to trust God and give our life completely to Him. Goodness inspires hope, and hope inspires faith, and faith inspires a life worth living and a relationship with God worth telling other people about. Faith is what you use to live out the dreams, passions, hopes, and desires God has given you. Faith is what gives you the ability to be radically adventurous and crazy for Jesus. Faith is what helps you fall into who God designed you to be. Faith is the energy behind the risks God wants you to take in life. Faith is what helps you fall hopelessly head over heels in love with LOVE Himself.
God's goodness reveals to us that He really is a God that we can trust fully. God's goodness reveals to us that everything that keeps us from really trusting in Him is just folly and usually just fear.
When I fully came to know God's goodness I was on a family vacation in Cairns, Australia. Now Cairns is the gateway to the great barrier reef, surrounded by rain forest, and we just happened to rent a house just behind the spa paradise of the world on the most beautiful beach I have ever seen. It was fantastically beautiful, romantic, relaxing, and everything I wanted Australia to be. I specifically remember lying in bed with Mimi (my Dad's Mom) unable to sleep because the Lord was bugging me. I realized that I did not fully trust him because there were certain life long fears I had about my life that I was holding on to. I thought that if I truly gave my life over to the Lord for his own doing that my worst fears would come true. As I lay there thinking that the Lord whispered to me, "I do not give passion with out purpose". Now, I have to interrupt myself to tell you that I was already a Christian who really loved Jesus, what I am talking about is truly surrendering yourself to Him. So, as God was showing me that the things that I wanted most in my life were a lot of the time desires that He has given me! How simple, how comforting was that thought to me!! God really wanted me to have joy and wanted me to live an exciting life for Him! Yet, I still desperately needed to know His goodness.
It was not until the end of the vacation that the Lord showed it to me. For quite a few days I had felt a strong urging to go and sit on the beach by myself, but for some reason I was afraid to go. One day I went to the Internet cafe to do some emailing and on the way back to the house I decided to go sit on the beach an talk to Jesus - even if it was in front of a bunch of people. Believe or not that was a really hard decision for me, because something in me knew that God was doing something and that scared me just a little bit. As I sat down on the beach the most incredibly awesome love swept over me, and God gave me a wonderful picture of who He was. It was like He deposited His goodness in me. It was so simple and not complicated but from that moment on I trusted Him in a way that I never had before. It was awesome and my life has been different ever since!
So....
Right now I am reading Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis, which is his own autobiography. Lewis was an atheist who spent his younger years desperately searching for joy - not just any joy but joy everlasting. He was an avid reader as I am sure most of you can imagine, but it was one day while waiting for the train that he picked up a book by George MacDonald that gave Lewis a taste of God's goodness. It was this little hint of God that I sure was hidden deep in a great story - Phantases, a Faerie Romance - that caused Lewis's hard heart towards God to soften just a little.
"I should have been shocked in my teens if anyone had told me that what I learned to love in Phantases was goodness. But now that I know, I see there was no deception. The deception is all the other way round - in that prosaic moralism which confines goodness to the region of Law and Duty, which never lets us feel in our face the sweet air blowing from "the land of righteousness," never reveals that elusive Form which if once seen must inevitably be desired with all sensuous desire - the thing (in Sappho's phrase) "more gold than gold"."
C.S. Lewis in his preface to his book - George MacDonald: An Anthology 365 Readings
C.S. Lewis in his preface to his book - George MacDonald: An Anthology 365 Readings
In a sense what Lewis is saying, once you taste of His goodness you will never be the same.
Goodness
George MacDonald
The Father was all in all to the Son, and the Son no more thought of His own goodness that an honest man thinks his honesty. When the good man sees goodness, he thinks of his own evil: Jesus had no evil to think of, but neither does He think of His goodness: He delights in His Father's. "Why callest thou Me good?"
George MacDonald
The Father was all in all to the Son, and the Son no more thought of His own goodness that an honest man thinks his honesty. When the good man sees goodness, he thinks of his own evil: Jesus had no evil to think of, but neither does He think of His goodness: He delights in His Father's. "Why callest thou Me good?"
I want to encourage you to seek God and ask Him to show you His goodness! What do you have to lose?
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