God is good

At some churches I’ve been to, the worship leader will start by saying, “God is good!” And the people all reply, “All the time!”

Then the worship leader calls back, “All the time!” And the people reply, “God is good!”

I am by no means criticizing this practice. But I do wonder sometimes if people really take those words to heart, or if they’re just words they say when they’re feeling good about things at church.

The honest truth is, whether we truly believe these words or not will shape our Christian lives whether for the good or for the bad.

Abraham certainly wasn’t feeling good when one night, God told him, “Abraham, go and sacrifice Isaac on an altar to me.”

Here was a child that God had been promising for at least a quarter of a century and probably longer, and now God was saying, “Offer him to me as a burnt offering.”

How many people would be saying, “God is good,” after that? Would you?

And yet Abraham obeyed. He didn’t delay his obedience, either. He started out early in the morning to do what God had asked. And he went all the way to the point of binding his son, putting him on the altar, and raising the knife to kill him.

How could Abraham do that? Because the words “God is good” were not just a catch phrase for him. He really believed them.

Abraham knew God’s promises to him. He knew that God had promised to make a nation through Isaac. And he knew that because God is good, he would never break his promises.

So if God made him kill his own son, Abraham believed in his heart that God was good and would raise Isaac back from the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did. (Hebrews 11:19)

Abraham’s words to his servants were very significant. He told them, “We will come back to you. We will go away to worship, but we will come back to you.”

The words in the Hebrew are particularly emphatic. Abraham believed God was good, and so he was willing to go all the way to obey him.

How about you? Do you believe that God is good? Do you really believe it? Or is it just a catch phrase to you?

Unless you truly believe God is good, you will always hesitate to obey him. You will always be questioning whether his way is best. Unless you truly believe that God is good, you’ll never be able to please him.

As the writer of Hebrews said,

Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. (Hebrews 11:6)