God is Good, All the Time…All the Time,God is Good
We say this with our pastor when we gather to worship every Sunday. It’s an important reminder. It doesn’t matter what kind of situation everyone right then is experiencing – we come together and say with one voice, God is good, all the time…all the time, God is good.
When things are going according to plan, this is always easy to say. It’s almost automatic. Even when there’s a bump or two in the road, we all grin and bear it and repeat with a little more determination and a twinge of hope.
But when the wheels have come off the wagon, it won’t stop raining, and bad news is delivered like an Amazon Prime order…is God still good? Or is it just something that’s said to make us feel good, like a cute and clever card in the mail?
When I think about my own life’s journey I see significant decisions along the road that have helped me when sea billows roll, to keep holding on to my faith and be less distracted by the storm. By the way, these are certainly not once in a lifetime choices – but forks in the road I face all the time. Choosing gets easier as I keep walking in faith.
I have to turn away from thinking that God is my faithful employee who is responsible for keeping my life ordered in all the ways I hope.
He must become greater and greater, and I must become less and less. – John 3:30
This is John the Baptist, pointing to Jesus and telling his own disciples that he is not the Messiah, he is only a groomsman. John realized his place because he understood where his cousin (Jesus) had really come from – heaven.
God is good all the time not because he faithfully follows my directions but because I am coming to understand that what I want matters less and less. Until I can let go of my own fear and desires I won’t be able to think about God’s will and see things eternally.
He is taking my life away from me and exchanging it for Himself. God is good and better than anything I could ever imagine for myself.
My thinking about who God is must change – He isn’t a good luck charm.
Do not allow this world to mold you in its own image. Instead, be transformed from the inside out by renewing your mind. As a result, you will be able to discern what God wills and whatever God finds good, pleasing, and complete. – Romans 12:2 (The Voice)
What a terrible feeling to realize that I have been trying to use God like an emergency medication each time I have a bad spell. Am I really just keeping him in the medicine cabinet? Have I reduced him to an amulet hanging about my neck?
All of the time God is good because He is transforming the way I think about Him. He has a path for me to walk in and it is the right way. Once my ways of thinking begin to change – so will the ways I see reality.
All too often God is an emergency switch that I pull only when I smell the smoke.
So we have no reason to despair. Despite the fact that our outer humanity is falling apart and decaying, our inner humanity is breathing in new life every day. You see, the short-lived pains of this life are creating for us an eternal glory that does not compare to anything we know here. So we do not set our sights on the things we can see with our eyes. All of that is fleeting; it will eventually fade away. Instead, we focus on the things we cannot see, which live on and on. – 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 (The Voice)
I’ve got a real problem if I believe that God is good only when it looks as if he has saved the day. My definition of “saving the day” is so short-sighted. Too often I believe that God is only located behind that “break glass in case of emergency” boundary. The reason that God is good all the time is because my perception is changing – I’m trying, more and more, to look at what lasts forever.
All the time, God is good, is forever.
When sorrows like sea billows roll
Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say
It is well, it is well, with my soul
It is well, it is well with my soul
The Invisible Man 
I loved this devotional…..and how true.
GOD is GOOD ALL THE TIME!
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I am reminded that Horatio lost his children to a ship wreck and he wrote this beautiful song! He was also a lawyer – there is hope and God IS good!
Horatio G. Spafford was a successful lawyer and businessman in Chicago with a lovely family — a wife, Anna, and five children. However, they were not strangers to tears and tragedy. Their young son died with pneumonia in 1871, and in that same year, much of their business was lost in the great Chicago fire. Yet, God in His mercy and kindness allowed the business to flourish once more. On Nov. 21, 1873, the French ocean liner, Ville du Havre was crossing the Atlantic from the U.S. to Europe with 313 passengers on board. Among the passengers were Mrs. Spafford and their four daughters. Although Mr. Spafford had planned to go with his family, he found it necessary to stay in Chicago to help solve an unexpected business problem. He told his wife he would join her and their children in Europe a few days later. His plan was to take another ship.
About four days into the crossing of the Atlantic, the Ville du Harve collided with a powerful, iron-hulled Scottish ship, the Loch Earn. Suddenly, all of those on board were in grave danger. Anna hurriedly brought her four children to the deck. She knelt there with Annie, Margaret Lee, Bessie and Tanetta and prayed that God would spare them if that could be His will, or to make them willing to endure whatever awaited them. Within approximately 12 minutes, the Ville du Harve slipped beneath the dark waters of the Atlantic, carrying with it 226 of the passengers including the four Spafford children.
A sailor, rowing a small boat over the spot where the ship went down, spotted a woman floating on a piece of the wreckage. It was Anna, still alive. He pulled her into the boat and they were picked up by another large vessel which, nine days later, landed them in Cardiff, Wales. From there she wired her husband a message which began, “Saved alone, what shall I do?” Mr. Spafford later framed the telegram and placed it in his office.
Another of the ship’s survivors, Pastor Weiss, later recalled Anna saying, “God gave me four daughters. Now they have been taken from me. Someday I will understand why.”
Mr. Spafford booked passage on the next available ship and left to join his grieving wife. With the ship about four days out, the captain called Spafford to his cabin and told him they were over the place where his children went down.
According to Bertha Spafford Vester, a daughter born after the tragedy, Spafford wrote “It Is Well With My Soul” while on this journey.
Lynn Morris Currently in Houston, Texas Tel: 832 444 5763 m. 281 392 4078 h. lmorris@globalmaddog.com or mrsblackmerc@gmail.com
Hoping I can be as good as person… as my dog already thinks I am! Kyrie 2016
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Randy, you never cease to amaze me. It is so true that our sights need to be on heaven and our hopes in Him alone…Your writing, like the Word, is easily understood. I believe that is important. I don’t have to concentrate on the individual words so much that I miss the meaning of the passage…the eternal meaning that gets past the pompous into to the personal and shows us God as He really is…very Good. Thank you. Patsy Marler Gloor
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YES! ….all the time…A-Men!
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