Goodness

          Goodness is intrinsic and essential to good works. From God’s perspective, doing good things is not His definition of “good works”. In order to have “good works”, the foundational element of our character must be “goodness”… ”good” being born of God, because the Lord our God is the sole possessor of “good” in the universe… He is the standard of goodness. From God’s perspective, without His goodness in us, our “good works” are considered “dead works.”

Pretty radical thing to say huh? i’d say it sorta blows the whole idea of “i’m a good person” out of the water. i believe the world has redefined the idea of “goodness” to mean, “that which is morally right according to me, having the qualities required to play a certain role, a benefit or advantage to someone or something.” In my opinion, the world has lowered the standard of “goodness” to something achievable and born from its own effort.

Ultimately, all things will come to rest at the feet of Jesus… His judgment of things is where the buck stops, so to speak…..if that is true, and it is, then the idea of “goodness” must be according to His standards. His goodness is incomprehensible to the finite mind, and our best ideas of God’s goodness are not enough to adequately describe this detail about the Lord.

If we are the people of God, this particular fruit of the Spirit is central and elemental to our character. If the Lord is the true standard of what is “good”, then it is impossible to be a “good person” without the Lord living in your heart. Sometimes i think people declare themselves to be a “good person” more as a way of reassuring themselves they’re not really as bad as they probably are.

Goodness is a standard for believers. It’s more than stuff you do or things you think, as with all the fruits of the Spirit, it is the way we are, it is one of our character traits infused into not only all we do, and say, but how we conduct ourselves.

i do love my wife, so very much. i know her…i know her details, her little habits, the way she thinks of things and problem solves; i know how she typically sees the world around her and maybe can reasonably predict many of her actions. i have even learned her few annoying little idiosyncrasies….all of which make up the person i know as my wife. If you love someone, it seems to me, we should know their details – their favorite color, how they will come to their conclusions, what their standards are, how they tilt their head or curl their mouth to laugh, how they flip their hair, which shoe they tie first, their preferences in clothes and food, what makes them sad, what inspires them, and what makes them cry. When you say you love someone, those are a few of the things you would know about them.

We, who are believers, say we love Jesus, and we tell people we are looking for Him to return to take us home, but i don’t think we know Him like we say we do… too many don’t seem to know His details much, and if we love Him like we say we do, how come we seem to know so little about Him? He is not hidden like we often think. If anyone is hiding it us from Him, we were hiding in the beginning and we’re still hiding today, so much so, that our hiding impairs our vision. When we are hiding, not only does it make us hard for others to see, but it also makes it hard for us to see others.

We love talking about the value of knowing scripture, the importance of prayer, and being able to quote verse and address… and we love to quote His promises and judgments…don’t get me wrong, those are very important and necessary things… but what are God’s details? Do you know His details and How do you relate to God?

One of God’s details is His goodness…. it is one of His many infinite attributes…His goodness literally saturates His whole being. …it’s sort of always in the background of everything that we know about God. The more we know about the Lord, His details, and His Word…. the more we are going to understand what is truly good and what is not. We get to know “goodness” by being involved with the personification of “goodness”… Jesus… and the better we know Him and His details, the more of a sharpened gold standard of goodness we can live by.

Seeing as how God is good, all the time…what is good anyway? What do we mean when we talk about something being good, or decide something is better than something else? How do we decide what is good?

Think about it….there are many things we decide are good, and i have to add that most people think things are good as long as they get what they want.

Do we think people become addicted to drugs because they love being addicted? It’s not because they enjoy living under a bridge or going hungry, nor is it because they love the lifestyle, the poverty, or the ensuing depression. i believe it’s because, to them, the high feels “good”, though temporary, it is “a good feeling.” And the longer the addict uses, the more elusive the “good feeling” becomes.

In the idea of making money, doing business, or working a job, some business owners have an attitude of “If it works….do it.” It doesn’t matter whether it is legal, ethical, or morally right… they figure if nobody catches them and they can make a profit, it was a good idea… it makes them feel good and they are making money. They would say, “Business is good.”

In another way, there are many things that have been proven to be good for us that don’t seem good. Eating a healthy diet and exercising is good for us, but many of us have a difficult time doing it for long. Some medicine is good for us, and sometimes necessary, but it often tastes so bad we convince ourselves it’s not a good thing. Not many people take medicine because it tastes so good.

i don’t believe we, in and of ourselves, can define goodness… Why?… because we are inclined to explain our notion of goodness, based on what seems good to us. Our idea of goodness is so very self-centered and as a result, we must turn to a standard higher than ourselves for a definition.

All that to say… that our idea of what is good is so very subjective. We praise Him and say “God is good” when our prayers are answered, and when they aren’t answered like we think they should, we often lay awake at night questioning God’s goodness. Is He still good if He does not answer right away? When He heals us of a dire illness, we decide He is good…and if He doesn’t, we cry out with the question, “If God is so good, how could He let this happen to me?” We are a fickle bunch, i think.

 

Knowing what goodness is, from God’s perspective, is like getting to know the wind… it’s always there, moving things, and changing things, always in the background. For us to understand goodness we must know God and His details. This may seem odd to say but think about it: Goodness is both hidden and revealed, it is seen in the idea of “the greater includes the lesser” like a mother carries a child in her womb. Goodness has a way of bringing potential things into becoming a reality. AND…

God’s Goodness drives providence. i believe the Lord’s goodness is ultimately seen in His providence… so… i asked myself after making that brainy statement… self… what is providence? Honestly, it sounded really smart, but i had no answer… eventually, over the course of 4 years, i’m finally able to say the Lord did give me ideas.

Here it is: i believe God’s providence is His unfailing and continual instruction, His unfailing leadership, and precision navigation compelled by loyalty, love, and mercy…accomplishing His good pleasure through the power of His sovereign will. Kinda long, but that’s what i’ve got. His plan… is goodness in perfection because God is perfectly good… all the time and to infinity, and infinity means no left right, up down, front, or back. He is infinitely good past infinity. Hebrews 13:8, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” His goodness is unwavering and unsullied by shadows, secrets, or indecision, nor can it be judged by our experience, for truthfully, our lives are not a very stable thing. First, we’re up, then we’re down…. like a wheel, and we go round and round with it.

Charles Spurgeon said that God’s goodness and providence is like the axle of a wheel. While the wheel’s outer edge is exalted and then made low, round and round, the axle is always the same and is always central to the rest of the wheel. No matter how far we run, or how fast we go, we cannot outdistance the goodness of God, it is at the center of all the wheel does.

Do you get it? So many times, we look at only what happened today, or even in a particular moment… today… our vision, being so short-sighted all the time, only seeing “in the moment”… and when His goodness is not in our face evident, from that we draw a large, generalized conclusion, “God’s goodness is not here. Afterall, look at how this situation turned out.”… all because we aren’t seeing it. It’s so very self-centered and subjective to think that because “I” don’t see His goodness, it must not be here…..then we cry “Boo-Hoo, God must not love me anymore.” We really MUST grow up church.

One reason God gave man the concept of “remembrance” was so we could look back at life in general and see the entirety of things, rather than looking at each little situation, one by one. Looking at life over a time span, you will see His persistent goodness… we’ll see that God is wise, and just, and He is goodness personified. Yet, here we are fretting about our troubles.

Remembering our days in the past we will see God’s heart instead of moaning around with our mouths full of “woe is me”… we will bless God for his mercies towards us, and how God’s goodness has saturated our lives. Indeed, God is good, all the time, and all the time, God is good.

 

Why do you think it’s a good idea to believe God is good, and that His goodness lives in us through Christ, as a constant? There are many facets to this, but the first one that comes to mind is:

if, God forbid, He were NOT good… He would still be God… but fortunately for everybody, He IS good, and His goodness IS the standard by which we live. If we want to know goodness we must know God, and there is no way to understand what true goodness is without knowing God.

Often, we simply can’t grasp the picture of our existence in a wide enough view to see God’s goodness in our lives… for many of us, our “vision” simply isn’t wide enough. i say, let us ask the Lord to increase our “depth of field”, it is about the width of view at a certain distance, and is used to describe the optics in binoculars concerning the quality of the instrument. Lord increase our “depth of field” to see Your everlasting goodness upon the earth, Amen.

As previously stated, for many, it seems goodness is just hard to see from where we are standing. Many years ago when i was in the service, i went to a small Persian rug factory in Italy. i’d always been fascinated by the intricate patterns and incredible artistry involved, and in that little business, i’d heard they made some of the world’s most beautiful rugs, all hand dyed, hand-knotted, 100% wool… very expensive. As i walked through the area where all the work was going on, it was just so quiet… everyone was very focused. In a hushed tone, i asked the guide why all these rugs were so unattractive and just confused-looking? He looked at me for a moment, then chuckled saying, “Oh, you’re looking at the wrong side.”

Isn’t that how goodness looks to us many times? It’s so easy to become circumstantial when trouble is at the door.

When we’re looking for the goodness in God’s plan while we’re in the middle of a terrible storm, it’s just hard to see. Maybe it’s none of our business other than to simply have faith in God and trust that He is good and that His goodness is in us.

By the blood of Jesus and through faith, goodness is imparted to us….it is there, intrinsic to our character because Jesus is alive in us. Everywhere we go, everything we touch, everywhere we set our feet, the oil of anointing of God’s goodness leaves its mark. In every kind word and every good deed, His goodness is infused in it and passed on to the world around us.

Once i had a dream where i awoke in the middle of the night and walked into the kitchen. There, on the table in the middle of the room were glowing bottles of olive oil, sort of illuminated by the moonlight that was coming in the window. One bottle was a little more than half full and the other looked to be more exactly half full. For some reason, i thought to condense the two bottles into one. i poured one into the other but was left with about a third left over. In the dream, i wondered to myself what i was going to do with the extra… i shrugged my shoulder nonchalantly and decided to drink it, so i did just that. When i drank the remaining oil, instantly, i faintly glowed as the olive oil glowed and when i walked out of the kitchen, as i looked back, in my footsteps was a fine oil footprint on the floor which also faintly glowed. Where i had been in the kitchen, i could see the faint glow of oil on everything i had touched with my hands and every place i had stepped. It was the goodness of God, the oil of anointing, no…… more….it was an “unction”, the thick paste of anointing. That is how God’s goodness is in us and that is a visualization of how goodness, as a fruit of the Spirit looks from a spiritual perspective as we go forward into the world with the gospel of Jesus in our hearts.

 

While grappling for understanding on my part about “goodness” as a fruit of the Spirit, i’ve realized there are things of the Lord in which God Himself IS the explanation and definition. The only way to communicate some of His attributes is by metaphor and figures of speech, using phrases like, “It is like…”, “similar to….”, or comparing one thing to another.

Goodness subdues and coerces… subduing by way of God being so good to us we can’t help but love Him, and coercive in that when God’s goodness is poured out, even on the unbelieving, they are driven to their knees in honor of the King. Proverbs 25:21-22, “If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat; And if he is thirsty, give him water to drink; For so you will heap coals of fire on his head, And the LORD will reward you.” God’s goodness is never still, like the wind… day and night it is always moving. When the sun shines it is moving up and down the hills, across oceans and deserts… goodness is never still. The moon shines and the stars light up, and still, it moves on. Even in darkness, when our eyes see nothing, goodness is still moving like the ocean waves; it is like when we are asleep, the forests and fields are still growing, we may not notice but His goodness is always marching on.

Romans 12:3, “…Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it’s important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.”

Another aspect of goodness is that man cannot control it. The goodness of God which lives in us will always find a way to leak out of our cracks. i have long thought that God only uses cracked and broken things. In Luke 7 when a woman brought an expensive alabaster flask full of very expensive anointing oil, she broke the flask and poured the oil on Jesus. The oil ran out of the cracks and broken places all over everything, and isn’t God’s goodness like that?… it just runs out of all our broken and cracked places everywhere we go…even when we aren’t thinking about it.

Of course, it helps if we just let the Spirit flow and try not to control the proceedings… even at that, His goodness has a way of coming out of us…Jesus has a way of turning things into redeeming situations because He is good, and the Holy Spirit is always working towards our good.

Romans 8:28, “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.”

 

God’s goodness will never be restrained, not chained, nor managed by man….. it does what the Lord says and follows His will, like the wind or the sea, it cannot be directed by man, and is exclusively controlled by God. Man cannot alter it, and cannot change it; goodness goes before and after us like a cloud during the day and a pillar of fire at night. Psalm 23:6, “Surely goodness and mercy are with me All the days of my life; And I will dwell in the house of the LORD Forever.”

Isn’t it beautiful that we get to possess this fruit of the Spirit? Goodness….it is the fruit of your character and life, evidence that we are the righteousness of God in Christ. Think about it.

 

In light of the goodness of God, i can’t see why some folks practice, what i call, a “comfortless gospel”… today they believe God loves them and tomorrow He hates them… a child of the King one day, reduced to a child of the devil the next. You’re in, you’re out, you’re up, you’re down… how does that work? For me, i could never believe a gospel like that, there is no hope or peace in it. But in the goodness and providence of God there is the stability of faith, and the strength of hope, for the Lord will, in no wise, cast off His people whom He has chosen. i would not want to walk like the world, void of His goodness… to live like that would be like living in such hopelessness, that all the people, in the end, would get the same worthless prize… and i don’t know about you, but i’d like more than that. The Lord has it, and i want what He’s got… Jesus, my beautiful and glorious Jesus.

i heard a man say he believed every particle of dust that danced in the sunlight doesn’t move an atom any more or less than God wishes. It is His goodness which makes even the dust dance in the morning light, provoked by the breeze, gently moving, always moving everywhere.

 

God is so good, He even provides many of His blessings to those who are not His children… His goodness transcends the worlds badness and is greater than all of the negative things that we see going on around us. The truth is, there are a lot of bad things that happen in the world, and those unfortunate things cause some people to question the goodness of God or even the very existence of God. Personally, i think it’s just silly for anyone to say, “Oh no, God doesn’t let bad things happen.” His knowing is NOT His ordaining…just because He knew something was going to happen doesn’t mean He made it happen. Think about it.

i believe every droplet of water has its orbit as well as the sun in the heavens, and that the dust from the broom of a janitor has a path just like the stars have their course. i believe the aphid’s footsteps over a fruit tree bud are as destined as the rain is not random but precise where it falls. If we believe in God, we must believe in His goodness also… there is no standing point between that and unbelief. If you do you do, and if you don’t, you don’t.

His goodness is the axle and we are the wheel, with the axle being central to all that happens with the wheel, whether or not the wheel understands or appreciates the axle… that is a picture of God’s goodness.

Be strong and courageous, take your time and breath… life is good, more than you know. Amen!