the BLESSING
Identifying the Goodness of God
November 4th, 2022
Romans 8:31-32, ‘So what does all this mean? If God has determined to stand with us, tell me, who then could ever stand against us? For God has proved His love by giving us His greatest treasure, the gift of His Son. And since God freely offered Him up as the sacrifice of us all. He certainly won’t withhold from us anything else He has to give.’ (TPT)
the Full life
At some point in our lives, I would be willing to wager that we all have felt like a loser, like we have failed, like we could have at least done better. I bet we have also felt at one time or another as if life dealt us a pretty rotten hand or the short end of the straw or just overlooked us altogether. At times, we might have even found ourselves riding a tremendous wave, surfing the crest, and in a blink, be pulled beneath the undertow, completely pummeled by an unsettled sea of storms and shipwreck.
Life is crazy like that, isn’t it? I have also been buried in the deepest trench, struggling even to keep my head out of the quicksand threatening to pull me under, and in one simple and minute turn of events, immediately found myself body-surfing that wave I thought might drown me. It can go both ways, can’t it. From high to low and low to high. Just like that.
There is a blessing from God I believe we take for granted all too frequently, which is being brought out of the slimy, miry pit and placed instead on higher, drier ground, with a new song, a deep praise, on our lips. The psalmist in Psalm 40 praises God for this turn of events and a new beginning, and I imagine this blessing comes on the heels of having been buried in the same hole God has just brought him out of. God is sneaky like that. I think He allows us to be immersed in things and found in places we never should have been in the first place perhaps so we can know the goodness and the relief of being rescued out of such a dark and nasty situation.
We cannot know the exquisite palate of victory, if we haven’t first tasted the sourness, the bitterness of defeat. It sets the vast distinction apart. We may even encounter a paradigm shift in that what we once thought was the epitome of happiness and success has been replaced by true joy and goodness when we find ourselves looking through God’s lens and no longer our own.
For many years, I chased the world by its tail. I was that people the psalmist wrote about: ‘And He gave them their request but sent leanness into their soul.’ (NKJV) It was like being cauterized; the nerve-endings of right and wrong, decency and indecency, morality and humanity numbed and deadened. But when God gets a hold of your heart, you desire His desires, you walk on His path, and what breaks His heart breaks yours. It causes something to well up inside of you, prompting and nudging you to look through His eyes and allow your heart to beat like His and you see the brokenness in the world. You choose to be a part of the solution, not the cause of the problem. When this occurs, you find that all along you have had the fullest of everything even in the midst of hardship and turmoil and loss. Isn’t it a Blessing to share God’s vision?! It’s 20/20, by the way!
Isaiah 58:11, ‘”I will give you a full life in the emptiest of places.”’ (MSG)
