IS GOD ALWAYS GOOD?

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Psalm 119:68"You are good and do good;..."

The goodness of God is clearly presented in the Bible.  But, do we really believe this to be true?  Are we so prone to thinking of God as a "super human" or somewhat like our earthly father that we transfer human weakness to Him as well?  Just a bit of introspection causes us to be confident that we ourselves are not consistently good even by human standards.  But, consider this, God is infinitely and perfectly good. What a comfort and encouragement this must be to our souls that God consistently shows goodness and kindness to us all the days of our lives.

Nearly 40 years ago I remember this verse from Psalm 119 bringing me overwhelming peace and comfort.  My dad lay in a coma for 3 weeks following a fall from a hay wagon that landed him on his head.  The very day he came out of the coma and seemed to be headed for a complete recovery blood clots clogged his lungs and he died within 24 hours. At the time Mark was going to seminary and one of his professors (Russ Glessner) had been sharing this verse about the goodness of God and Mark in turn told me of it.  So many times in the days and weeks after by dad was gone that verse would come to my mind and give me rest in my soul.

God is good and He does good—let’s believe it and live accordingly.

See you on Thursday morning to discuss the goodness of God.

GOD'S IMMENSITY

"Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith"—(Philippians 3:8-9)

Here we find some good thoughts tied to these verses from Tozer.  "What is it that makes you happy?  What cheers you up and gives your morale a lift? ... That's our trouble.  We know that God is so vast that in comparison everything (all the universe) is just the size of a hazelnut.  And yet we're not a happy people because we've got our minds set on things.  We multiply things, and we increase things and we perfect things.  We beautify things and put our confidence in things and God.... and so we put God as a plus sign after something else."   Is that our life?  Are we putting our confidence in things and not really in God?

This Thursday we will sink our thoughts into the error of having our confidence in any thing, or any one other than God--the only One to hold together everything. 

The universe is but like a hazelnut in comparison to God.

FINITE TRYING TO GRASP INFINITE

"The hidden life begins, Tozer says, when we realize that 'God is all that we would have and can desire' (p.3).  Once we really believe that all we need and desire is found in God alone, the significance of God's infinitude is overwhelming."  from The Attributes of God by Tozer

Perhaps the nearest we can visually imagine of infinity is a view of the night sky as shown in this painting by Ezra Suko.

This Thursday morning we will be working on trying to grasp a bit more about infinitude.  If we could expand our grasp of this unique quality of God even a bit, our daily lives would be changed.  I have a good mental picture of infinitude to share with you that was not in our books.  See you tomorrow as we discuss Chapter 1, Session 2 of The Attributes of God.