“God is good, all the time and all the time, God is good.” You may have heard this in church as a pastor saying this to the congregation, and the congregation echoing it back. Have you ever questioned it though? Has there ever been a thought way in the back of your brain that questions the goodness of God? I will be honest and say I have.
We all go through difficult circumstances and life experiences that may cause us to question the goodness of God. Why is that? I think it is because we live in a fallen world. We live in a world where bad things happen every day. There are people who get sick and die, people who seek to harm other people, car accidents, jobs and money lost. The list can go on and on. The point is these things are not orchestrated by God. God actually gave us a perfect world to live in, but through sin the world became imperfect. However, God in his goodness even had a plan for man’s failure. I Peter 1 tells us that even before the foundation of the world God’s plan was for the precious blood of Christ to be sacrificed for us. This is mind boggling to me. That means that before God created the world, He knew man would fail. Because He knew man would fail, Christ would need to die for us to restore us back to relationship with Him. We are so important to God, that even knowing all that would be involved, He still chose to create us and have a relationship with us! How much must God value us and value relationship with us!
I think when we question the goodness of God, we are experiencing some of what Eve experienced in the garden. Even though God provided a perfect world for us to live in, He also provided choice. God wants us to choose Him. He wants us to choose life. He gave Adam and Eve the entire garden but also put one tree in the garden that He asked them not to eat of. He provided life but He also provided choice. Then in Genesis 3, we see the exchange between Satan disguised as a serpent and Eve. Satan questions Eve as to the validity of what God has asked them to do. He manipulates her and tells her that God doesn’t really want to protect her from death. He convinces her that God knows once she eats the fruit her eyes will be opened and she will be like God and know good and evil. So as we know, Eve was tempted and acted on that temptation by eating the fruit and then giving some to Adam.
Now hindsight being 20/20 and also seeing things more clearly when they are not happening to us, we can look at Eve and see that she had the whole garden. Why on earth would that one tree that God told Eve not to eat of be so tempting? Why would she believe this serpent over the God she had a relationship with? It is not so easy to see things clearly when it is happening in our own lives. When storms come into our lives, when circumstances we do not understand happen, when life hurts and feels like it takes more than it gives, we have a choice. Do we believe the God of the universe is really good and is for us not against us? Or do we believe that voice of deception that comes to us and questions God’s goodness? I promise I have not always succeeded in squelching the voice of doubt right away. And when I haven’t, God’s forgiveness is always there. There will be many things we will not understand in this lifetime, but I believe that is where the sacrifice of praise spoken about in Hebrews 13 comes in. It says,”Therefore by Him let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name.” We are essentially sacrificing getting all our questions answered and choosing to praise God anyway. And why do we praise God? Because He is good!