Is God Good All the Time?

You all know the saying “God is good all the time, and all the time God is good.”  Its a cute saying, but is it true?  Human nature leads us to try to make things fit into our human understanding but where God is concerned, His ways surpass simple human understanding.  It is natural for some people to feel like God has forgotten about them or that He isn’t listening when they are asking for something and its not coming in the way or at the time they would like.  That type of thinking can lead us to wonder if God really is good all the time.  The thing we have to be careful about though is putting God on our level, or even lower, by saying “God if you don’t give me what I want, when I want it, then you’re not really that great”.  Even thinking that we know what is best for us and when we should have it places God in an inferior position.  I personally used to do this without even trying.  I trusted God in many ways and I prayed for guidance but if I didn’t hear anything as quickly as I thought I should, I’d go off and do what I thought was the right thing to do.  Many times, my decisions led to problems I wouldn’t have had if I had been patient and waited on God to answer me or to show me that what I was asking for really wasn’t what was best for me and that His plans included something even better than my limited imagination could conceive.  

Is God really “good” when He allows hard times to come in our lives?  My opinion is people who ask this question don’t truly know God.  While He is the all-knowing, all-powerful, always present God of the bible, He is also a loving Father who wants desperately to have His children return to Him.  It is hard for some to reconcile a God of fury, wrath and judgment with the picture of a loving God who is always trying to give us more than we deserve.  First off, we should never attempt to judge God or think we know better than Him unless we want to see the fury, wrath and judgment firsthand.  When we come to know Him personally we will see that He prefers to be a loving Father figure and pour His blessings on us.  However, God wouldn’t be God if He didn’t exercise judgement as well as mercy.  How much would your own kids respect you if you let them get away with breaking a family rule and you stood idly by and did nothing?  God can’t let us break rules without consequence, but He does give us a way to return to His favor (repentence) because he loves us, and because He is good.  

If God didn’t allow bad things to happen we would have no understanding or appreciation of what is good.   He loves us so much He wants us to grow and progress and that means we will have to be tried and tested.  Sometimes “bad things” happen so that even better things can be revealed to us.  In my limited, humanistic understanding of God, I try to avoid questioning God’s goodness or intentions and just trust that He is working something great that I don’t really need to understand until His work in that particular area is complete.  It takes a lot of practice to get better at allowing God to have this type of control in your life.  Honestly, we are only fooling ourselves if we don’t acknowledge that He already has all the control…He is God after all!  Once we can accept that He really is in control and be grateful that He is in charge instead of us, it becomes easier to be patient and wait for His timing.  When I have done this it has never failed to amaze me how much better things turn out then when I went off of my own limited understanding.  

God really is good…and He is good all the time, even when He allows bad things to happen.  Life can be so much easier and sweeter for you when you realize this fact and surrender to His will, His power, and His love for you.