Despite the abundance of evidence that God is good and has good plans for His children, many of us still feel uncertain about God’s nature and doubt His goodness to us. The brokenness of life causes us to question God’s goodness; we have ‘ruined foundations’ that tend to lead us down paths of negative reactions such as shame, fear and wrongful control and must, therefore, daily make the choice to accept that ‘God is for us.’ To do this, we have to follow 3 principles:
- Accept that God has the final word.
- Accept that blessing is God’s natural inclination
- Taste & see that the Lord is good
1. God has the final word.
It is mutually exclusive to believe that God is good and that He acts in a way that is maliciously harmful to us, so we must learn (as Mary did, when faced with the stupendous news that she would be the mother of Jesus) to agree with God: ‘Let it be to me as you have said.’ (Luke 1:38) God cannot lie, we are told, and so if we accept that He has the final word and is good and true in all His ways, we have to believe that that is the case even when we cannot see how that can be. This is not the same as casuistry (being deceptive in our reasoning) or sophistry (a superficially plausible but generally fallacious method of reasoning). It’s simply saying that we lack the perspective, wisdom or knowledge to reconcile the appearance of events with God’s nature and therefore we will believe what God says about His nature above what we see or feel. Just as Job and Joseph had to trust God through severe trials even though their perspective was limited, we have to hold on to what we know is true of God’s nature. In any battle between feelings and faith, faith has to win!
2. Blessing is God’s natural inclination
Psalm 1 shows us a world where God is in total control and His natural inclination is to bless. Blessing doesn’t have to be tied to material prosperity (as the Sermon on the Mount makes clear), but Ps 67 makes it evident that God blesses us in order to be a blessing (see also Gen 12:3) and Romans 8 reminds us of all God’s blessings which will not be thwarted.
3. Taste & see that the Lord is good
Eugene Peterson says that ‘the anticipation of being blessed works changes in us that make us capable of being blessed.’ (‘Answering God’, P 25) As we read God’s Word, a true picture of who God is is revealed to us and our ideas about Him have to come into line with this revelation of Himself as we begin to see that He is a God who wants to bless us and is able to bless us. Our hearts are therefore stirred and encouraged to believe that God is good and we start to put our weight on that truth. We do as Peter has suggested and we taste and see that the Lord is good. We read that ‘God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work’ (2 Cor 9:8) and instead of being filled with fear and foreboding, faith and hope arise in our hearts and we are able to trust in the trials of life.
Numbers 6:22-27 gives us the priestly blessing, which forms the basis of the song ‘Benediction’ (Matt Redman). God is more eager to bless than we are to receive!