Is God good when life is bad?

I am often guilty of judging  God by the ease of my circumstances.

If my days are smooth and I”m happy, then God must be good.

But if it hurts, then God must have forgotten me. Or worse. Maybe He doesn’t care.

Is God good no matter what? And if He is, how can we know it?

Consider a doctor checking a patient. A diagnosis is made. The child has an infection. It’s deadly, unless it’s treated with the right medication. The doctor is gentle in nature and kind looking, kind of a Normal Rockwell figure. The child likes him and smiles when he comes in the room. All is well.

Until moments later, when the doctor comes back in the room with a long needle in hand. It takes just one look at the doctor for the child to know that this will hurt. A lot. All of a sudden the doctor doesn’t seem like he’s so good anymore. In fact, all of a sudden, the doctor seems like the enemy.

Is the doctor good? Does the doctor care about the child?

Or back to the main issue: Is God good when life is hard?

I’d like to give you 4 ways to know that God is good:

1. You can read about it. Think back to the doctor analogy. Maybe you’ve never had to go to the doctor. Maybe you’ve never noticed when you’re sick. But you’ve read on the internet that doctors are good and sometimes use painful methods to bring about healing. There is a book that tells all about the goodness of God. It’s called the Bible. Read it.

2. Someone tells you about it. If you’ve ever been sick, and if you’ve ever been to the doctor’s, and if you’ve ever received healing for that sickness, you’d better believe you would spend a few minutes telling anyone who cares what a great experience you had. You’d even be more vocal if you ran into a friend who was sick as well. Anyone who has experienced the goodness of God in their life will talk about it. That’s why I blog. I’m that someone. Listen up.

3. You experience it. Now we’re getting personal. If you really want to know that something works, you’ve got to try it. God’s goodness is all over us and around us. It’s in the air we breathe, it’s in the beauty we behold, it’s in the love we feel. Have you experienced his goodness in your life? Odds are you have felt his common grace and don’t even know it. Or maybe you just need to be reminded. God is good. Try Him.

4. He proves it. This is the test of all tests. God can tell you He’s good, others can tell it too, you can experience His goodness in common grace, but nothing I mean nothing can compare to God proving His goodness through Jesus Christ. God loves us so much that He sent His only Son Jesus to die on the cross as a payment for our sins. Now that’s as good as good gets.

It’s time to give up false notions about the goodness of God. Don’t just God’s goodness by your happiness. Don’t judge God’s goodness by the way you feel. Don’t judge God’s goodness by your getting everything you want. That’s called being immature and spoiled.

God is good no matter what. Sometimes it takes difficult days for us to see it.

But always, no matter what, God is good.

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