God is good — Jens New Song

I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord. Psalm 27:13-14

God is good.

We say it often. We throw around the phrase without thinking too much about the application of it. God is good might be something we say when we don’t want to talk about a situation anymore. It can be used to describe a good day. Or a special blessing. We say God is good to try and encourage someone in a hard time, when we don’t know what else to say.

God is good makes a good line in a song, or a poem or a blog post.

But there is a big difference between throwing around the phrase God is good, and really, truly believing that He is.

If we’re honest with ourselves, sometimes those three little words are hard to believe. When your life is falling apart, when you get a hard diagnosis, when a loved one dies, the goodness of God seems far away.

There are days of doubt. There are the really hard days, the big life changing moments when we wonder if God’s really got this after all. There are the normal days when you have a cold and laundry is pilling up and your kids need all the things. Those days can make it hard to believe too.

But that’s the difference between feelings and believing. There are lots of days that I don’t feel like God is good. The days when everything is going wrong, or I’m frustrated with my body, or relationships, or many other things. There are so many days that I don’t feel like God is good.

But I still believe it.

And I hang tight to that belief. Why? Because if I don’t, I will quit.

Just like the Psalmist, I need to believe in the goodness of God, or I will faint. The Psalmist here realizes that life is hard. In the rest of the chapter he talks about being surrounded by his enemies. Being afraid, being abandoned. He’s crying out to God to save him throughout the chapter. And at the end, he decides to hold on to what he knows.

He knows that God is good. He doesn’t always feel it. In fact, he feels the opposite right now. He feels scared and abandoned and in trouble. But he decides to believe in the goodness of the Lord.

And then he preaches a little sermon to himself. He reminds himself of what he knows. He tells himself to wait on the Lord. Or trust in the Lord. Or believe in God’s goodness and that He knows what He’s doing. Because no matter what the psalmist is feeling, he knows that God is good. And he knows that clinging to that truth is the only way to get through the trials he’s facing.

That belief, that reminding himself that God is good, gives him the courage and the strength to face another day. Keeps him from quitting. He understands that the belief that God is good is central to his ability to keep going in life.

The same is true for me. Life is hard somedays. Or, actually, a lot of days. And unless I believed to see the goodness of the Lord, I would faint. Even when I don’t understand. Even when it seems He must be wrong. Even when I don’t see it clearly. I still believe.

God is good. No matter what.