the BLESSING
Identifying the Goodness of God
November 28th, 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)
Nothing Wasted
The profoundness of God’s love for mankind is startling to me. It hasn’t always been, but as I grow closer to Him, as I fall more in step with Him, as life passes by more quickly than ever before, as He works out even the most seemingly insignificant details in my life, I find His handprint everywhere. In fact, I know there are instances in my own life—so I also know that means there are occurrences in everyone else’s lives as well—that we never even notice, know of or recognize, where He is actively at work. What the Lord has spared me from, I will never fully know, but I am aware it is powerful and compelling. It is a blessing to be favored by a Holy God, and the realization of that takes my breath away, steals it, makes my heartbeat skip, causes my head to spin and life to stand still for just a moment.
Yes, you heard me correctly. I am–and you are—highly favored, by the God of the Universe. Let that sink in for a moment. I think of the travesty of choices I have made in my fifty-plus years, the carelessness with which I executed my decisions and plotted my steps, and it is earth-shaking to me to look into a mirror at the face staring back at me, and reconcile within, that a holy and righteous God put a protective order around me and calls me Child. Not only did He give His one true and unique Son up for me and sent Him to pay my debt—a debt that carried the death penalty—but He chooses to see me as spotless and unblemished and whole. Not the broken vessel I always have been. He even celebrates and uses the fissures and shattered places in me from where He can shine through, uses my damage and cracks for other’s good and His glory. So it’s all worthwhile—all the mistakes and messiness and aberrations—not wasted at all.
Being the child of a King is an awe-inspiring thing. Even when I don’t act like it or deserve to bear that insignia. For my whole life, I was so proud to be my dad’s daughter. There was pleasure and status in that title, especially in the latter years when my dad had blessed so many people’s lives and had left so much goodness behind when he passed. I was proud. When I think of God Almighty, the God Who spoke the world into place and made mankind from His breath mixed with dirt so I would carry His DNA inside of me—the God Who patiently rights all wrongs and restores the eaten years and wages war for my soul—that God! is my Father! I am His child, and He is King. And that is profound to me.
2 Corinthians 9:8-11, ‘God can pour on the blessings in astonishing ways so that you’re ready for anything and everything, more than just ready to do what needs to be done. As one psalmist puts it: “He throws caution to the winds, giving to the needy in reckless abandon. His right-living, right-giving ways never run out, never wear out.” This most generous God who gives seed to the farmer that becomes bread for your meals is more than extravagant with you. He gives you something you can then give away, which grows into full-formed lives, robust in God, wealthy in every way, so that you can be generous in every way, producing with us great praise to God.’ (MSG)
