God is Good "All the Time"

This morning I was at the sink at my kitchen and I looked at a stone that had written on it, "God is Good All the time." I began thinking about that and how very few people will disagree with God is good and most won't say they disagree with God is Good all the time, but I have seen that we oftentimes live in contrary to this statement. The statement that many of us live by is, "God is good when things are good." How many times when we are having a bad day, or when something terrible happens in our life we begin to question God? What we are doing is we are questioning the goodness of God. I know you have either asked this question or been asked this question, "If God is Good (or loving) then why would He let bad things happen?" The central problem with this question is that it comes from the idea that we believe that at times God is not actually a "Good God."

I was talking with one of my mentors and a friend of mine and he was saying that in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve took a bite of the fruit their whole behavior can be summed up in 2 thoughts. 1) They believe that God is not Good and 2) they believe that God is a liar. If they believed that God was good all the time then they would have never listened to the serpent who suggested that God was not Good or He would have let them have the fruit. The serpent also suggests that God is a liar, and therefore not good, by not telling them what actually happens when they eat of the fruit. He suggested that God was trying to keep them from something even better. You see, if Adam and Eve would have held on to the Truth that God is God all the time, they would have resisted the fruit that God told them would cause them to die.

As people we need to be careful that we don't fall into the trap of believing that God is good, when things are good. God's goodness is not based on our circumstances. His Goodness is based upon Who He is. As soon as we put condition on God's goodness we begin to say that God's goodness is no longer based on who He is but instead of how we feel or what our circumstances look at.

There are many reasons why bad things happen in this world..we won't get into them in this blog entry. However, one thing is true, bad things started to happen when 2 people believed the lie that God was not Good All the Time!