Week #5 Noticing and Responding to God’s Goodness
Do you have experience-based confidence in God’s Goodness?
All human beings have been exposed to God’s goodness. Not all receive it as such.
Genesis 1:4,10,12,18,25,3; Ps 23:6; Acts 14:15-17; Matthew 5:45; Ps. 139:13,14; Ps. 119:68-72
We will never have the easy, unhesitating love of God that makes obedience to Jesus our natural response unless we are convinced that it is good for us to be, and to be who we are. We must trust that the path appointed for us by when and where and to whom we were born is good, and that nothing irredeemable has happened to us or can happen to us on our way to our destiny in God’s full world.
Doubt on this point gives force to the soul-numbing idea that God’s commandments are, after all, only for his benefit and enjoyment, and that in the final analysis we must look out for ourselves.
Most of our doubts about the goodness of our life concern very specific matters: our parents and family, our body, our marriage and children (or lack thereof), our opportunities in life, our work and calling (which are not the same thing), and our job. At the heart of our own identity lies our family, and our parents in particular. We cannot be thankful for who we are unless we can be thankful for them. Not, certainly, for all the things they have done, for they may have been quite horrible. And in many cases, we must come to have pity on them before we can be thankful for them.
Our parents are a part of our identity, and to reject and be angry with them is to reject and be angry with ourselves. We cannot reject ourselves and love God.
There is no “you” apart from your actual life. In that life, you must find the goodness of God. Otherwise, you will not believe that he has done well by you, and you will not truly be at peace with him. --Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, 337-341
Do you believe in the goodness of God and the goodness of the life he has given us?
Do you believe that:· God is my Father, and He is good. All the way through.
· This world is my Father's. It is good.
· My life is my Father's gift. It is good.
· That even with all my challenges, difficulties, failures, and opportunities… even with the reality of evil, it is good to be me, good to be living the life God has given me.
As you work down this list, you might find it increasingly difficult to affirm the points.
Can you confess with David that,
The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places indeed I have a beautiful inheritance Psalm 16:6
There is something deep within us that is ill at ease with God's goodness. There is a default mode to the human heart that simply, to be honest, does not believe God is good.
Because of this, our capacity to trust him is crippled, cautious, and always suspicious. This default attitude of our hearts is not eradicated by our conversion; It remains, haunting our life of faith with suspicious whispers, “You can't really trust him, not all the way... be careful here he is going to take you to a hard place abandon you.” Have you ever had thoughts like that? Do you think God has a mean streak?
This fear makes us vulnerable to what Tim Keller calls majestic self-pity. We begin to think that no one understands how hard my life is. No one appreciates the load I carry. No one will take care of me. I have to bear the weight of this difficult life I am living.
When you look at our difficulties in life, underneath them is often a fear that God is not good, that he cannot be trusted to manage my life, that he has required too much of us, and that we must take things into our own hands and live our lives from our own resources. And when we do, we fail.
It is the discovery of God's goodness that settles our hearts.
The gospel of God's Kingdom sits squarely on the deeply rooted truth of God's goodness, which is why it is called good news. Because God has shown himself to be good supremely in the life death and resurrection of his Son, we can trust him without reservation and all he directs us to do.
We do not have to hold back. We do not have to hedge our bets. We do not have to keep one eye on the escape hatch. God is good, we say, all of the time period upon that confidence we flourish and live. --Geoffrey Chapman
Discussion Questions
1 Look at the bulleted paragraph again. Are the sentences harder to believe as you move down the list?
God is my Father, and He is good. All the way through.
· This world is my Father's. It is good.
· My life is my Father's gift. It is good.
· That even with all my challenges, difficulties, failures, and opportunities… even with the reality of evil, it is good to be me, good to be living the life God has given me.
2 Read aloud Romans 8:28.
Is there a part of you that does not believe God is good? What effect does that have on your trust in God?
Look at Tim Keller's phrase majestic self-pity in the explanation. Can you see traces of this in your own life?
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