God is Good.

I agree with Bill Johnson.

God is Good!

I’ve been seeing a variation on the ad above on my Facebook newsfeed fairly regularly for a few weeks now. It is advertising a new course and book, as far as I can ascertain without clicking on the link, which focuses on Gods Goodness.

I believe that the Goodness of God is one of the most important truths that the church should be seeking to communicate to the world.

I also suffer from mental health problems, in particular depression.

I hold the two statements – that God is Good and His Goodness is good news – in tension every day. Earlier this  week, a friend on Facebook shared this song/spoken word piece about pain and suffering and the glory of God:

The video is, in my opinion, a powerful example of a worship song that takes lament and reality seriously – which is sometimes so valuable. The goodness of God doesn’t depend on our experience of reality, or our understanding. That point is well made by John Piper in the sermon snippeted in that YouTube video – a sermon I needed to hear and I believe many people need to hear and chew over.

God is Good.

There is a wonderful verse, about God and His Goodness, in Psalm 100. I reproduce the whole Psalm here because context is important, and the way the Psalm builds to a crescendo of goodness is wonderful:

A Psalm. For giving grateful praise.

Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth.

Worship the Lord with gladness; come before

him with joyful songs.

Know that the LORD is God. It is he who made us,

and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.

Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise;

give thanks to him and praise his name.

For the LORD is good and his love endures forever;

his faithfulness contineus through all generations.

In our small group this week instead of doing ‘sung worship’

like we normally do, a good friend led us in a prayerful

expression of thankfulness. This was incredibly powerful –

focusing our prayers and minds on thanking God, rather than

the usual list of things we ask for. And the reason that

thankfulness is so powerful is well expressed in this Psalm –

For the LORD is Good.

This is a truth to cling to, even when it hurts.

This is a truth to cling to, even in the worst of the storms of life.

This is a truth to cling to, because God’s love endures forever, unlike the fickle love of humans.

This is a truth to cling to, because God’s faithfulness continues  through all generations, even until the end of what we call ‘time’.

This is a truth to cling to, because God is Good.

God is Good.