The speaker offered a brief testimony before delivering his Bible message. “This week, a driver failed to yield the right of way to my wife and rammed into her head-on. But neither she nor the other driver were badly hurt. It could have been disastrous! Isn’t God good?”

I’m glad God demonstrated His goodness to the speaker and his wife by sparing her from severe injuries or death. He didn’t say anything wrong or inappropriate.

But I thought, “Wait! Wouldn’t God still be good if she had died?”

I recalled a godly college student killed by a drunk driver who ran a red light. As gut-ripping as the pain was to those who loved him, and as difficult as it was to understand God’s dark providence, wasn’t God good then, too?

 

God Is God When…..

We routinely say “God is good!” when things go our way. When we navigate an icy road during a winter storm and arrive home safely. When a biopsy finds no cancer. When a good job offer arrives after months of unemployment.

Yet God’s goodness is a fixed attribute that doesn’t vacillate with changing circumstances. It’s an intrinsic part of His nature, along with love, wisdom, power and sovereignty, just to name a few of His traits.

Randy Alcorn put it this way: “God is not only good when He does what we want, but also when He doesn’t do what we want. If God has to do what we want in order for us to be happy or to keep our faith in Him intact, then He is not our master but our servant.”

Vaneetha Risner, who has experienced severe suffering through the loss of an infant due to a physician’s mistake, the dissolution of a marriage due to a husband’s infidelity, plus the debilitating weakness of post-polio syndrome, adds this in reference to God’s goodness:

We must embrace both God’s love and sovereignty, not one instead of the other. If you only embrace His love, you will be confused and hurt when life gets hard. If you only embrace His sovereignty, you will resign yourself to thinking your life is driven by a cruel, impersonal and distant God, and you’ll forget His plan to work in your best interest. The grief process must include eventually accepting what has happened. Holding false beliefs about God will prevent us from that acceptance.

 

God Is Good When I’m Depressed

My family members and I have prayed numerous times for an end to my depressive episodes. Yet those dives into despair that began in childhood still occur. God’s means of grace sustain me, alleviate the worst symptoms and often shorten the stay of an episode. Yet no amount of faith or my wielding of spiritual weapons prevent the occasional encroachment of despondency.

Could victorious Christian living be seen not in the absence of depression, but in how we respond when an episode envelops us?

I’m not saying it’s easy to do, but over the years, when in the throes of depression, I’ve learned to “preach to myself” Bible verses that assert God’s goodness. Here’s a sampling of the scores of texts that refer specifically to His goodness, within a context that mentions other attributes as well.

• Nahum 1:7  “The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; he knows those who take refuge in Him.”
• Psalm 145:8-9  “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made.”
• Psalm 100:4-5  “Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name. For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.”
• Lamentations 3:22-25  “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.’ The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.”

 

Acknowledging God’s Goodness

A few years ago, I wept with a heavy heart as I watched a sunrise from my office at Columbia International University. In the throes of  my worst and longest episode of depression ever, after quoting aloud Lamentations 3:22-25,  I prayed this:

Father, I don’t feel Your love or Your goodness right now, but this text insists that You are loving and good, and Your Word is far more reliable than my feelings. So I accept this truth by faith.

Despite my pleas, You haven’t removed these seasons of darkness, so I assume You have a purpose for them. If You never remove my depression, please employ it for my good and Your glory. Please don’t waste this pain. Help me to eventually see Your goodness in it. To some degree, I already see its benefits. Episodes of despondency keep me desperately dependent on You, mitigate a tendency for pride, keep me in a posture of prayer, increase my longing for heaven and soften my heart toward other hurting people.

So today I acknowledge that You are good, merciful, loving and gracious. If You aren’t good, then the Christian gospel is a sham. Yet with all my heart, I believe the gospel of Christ is true. 

In the name of Your Son, who also poured out His heart to You through tears (Hebrews 5:7), and whose cross was the consummate example of how You redeem pain, amen.

I admit that it’s easier to pray such a prayer about depression, compared to someone who has a terminal cancer diagnosis or who suddenly loses a loved one in an accident. But no matter what threatens our view of God’s goodness, there’s a battle going on, and the battlefield is  our minds. It’s a battle of belief.

 

What will we believe about God?

Believing He’s good doesn’t prevent pain or grief, but it sustains us when we hurt. We come to acknowledge that God is in the business of redeeming all types of pain.

Yes, on my worst days niggling doubts about God’s goodness still vie for my attention. That’s when I lock my mental lens on the cross where Jesus died for me.

If that doesn’t convince me of His goodness, nothing will.

___________

I highly recommend two books by Vaneetha Risner: The Scars That Have Shaped Me and Walking Through Fire: A Memoir of Loss and Redemption. She blends personal story and a solid theology of suffering.