Divine Benevolence

Series: Life is Good

Romans 4:2 ESV

James 1:17 ESV

There might’ve been a time when I wasn’t absolutely sure that God WAS good all the time. What can I say, I was young..

The problem that I faced is that I wanted what I wanted when I want to do it.

Do you see the problem? It wasn’t God. It was my selfish, self-seeking selfishness.

As a young adult, I went through a phase where I attempted to negotiate with God. I had studied communication and argumentation in high school and in college, and I was making a case.

It wasn’t a good case.

Once again, the problem was not with God the problem was my immaturity.

In Romans 4:2 Paul asked the question, “do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?”

The argument he was making to the church in Rome spoke to the broader picture of the struggle within the church. The miraculous creation of the writings in the New Testament came about because of the new believers and their adolescent struggling and endless questions they had for the Apostles. We remember that Paul was a highly educated Pharisee who had studied under the renown scholar Gamaliel. The other Apostles had personally traveled with Jesus while Paul spent his life in the Hebrew classroom.

Both experiences were profitable for believers in the first century and for believers thousands of years later. Both experiences mattered.

In Matthew 5:45 the tax collector wrote that God, “makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” The point he is making is that we get both. We experience good times and we experience bad times. As a human it doesn’t feel good when we get the bad and so we don’t like the bad. But the truth of the matter is both are profitable. The older I get the more I realize we actually learn more from the bad than what we learned from the good. I’m not certain but I think it’s possible that when things are good we simply think about enjoying the good. But when things are bad we wonder why they’re bad. We wonder what happened. We wonder if we did something to cause it. In some cases we analyze the bad to death.

Really…

James 1:17 says, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the father of lights, with home there is no variation or shadow do to change.”

James was well aware that every gift comes from God.

Humans often define good and bad based on their experience with their feelings. In the Midwest in the 1960’s when we had a tornado warning we had to go to the basement. We had a piano in the basement a ping pong table in the basement a pool table in the basement a couch two chairs and a television set in the basement. We did not suffer when we had to go to the basement during a tornado warning. But we felt like we were suffering because a tornado was close by.

The truth is that every gift comes from God.

The next time something unexpected happens and you have to change your schedule for the day remember that God is often in the changes.

Look for the blessing.

Deborah

acrazyjourney.com