“And they shall be my people, and I will be their God. I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts that they may not turn from me. I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul.” Jer. 32:38-41
Every day we must remember that God is good and He does good to all, but especially to His children; those whom He has placed the fear of Him within. We naturally think of His many other attributes; His limitless storehouse of mercies, His inexhaustible riches of grace, His indefatigable steadfast love, His generosity, His patience, His tenderness, His faithfulness…but how often do we contemplate His goodness. “Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!” (Ps. 34:8) For He defines good since He is Good. “Good and upright is the LORD; therefore He instructs sinners in the way.”(Ps. 25:8)
God is good in that He gives us singleness of heart, “I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever” which is for our good and the good of our children. Too much of the time my heart gets distracted, divided out to lesser gods—too easily charmed by things less worthy of my attention, affection and adoration all because I don’t stop and contemplate the goodness of our God. I/we say the words but how they affect our day to day is the measure upon which we actually believe.
God also, promises that He will always do good to us, “I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them.” His promise is an everlasting goodness to His children. God is good and He cannot break a promise or He ceases to be good.
God is good and so He gives us singleness of action with that single heart, “And I will put the fear of me in their hearts that they may not turn from me.” He already said “one heart and one way”, that is, a heart bent upon walking in His way. So that requires me to seek first the kingdom of God daily,which is an action (one of many, if we are looking) that God gives to us in His goodness every day. “Oh, how abundant is your goodness, which you have stored up for those who fear you and worked for those who take refuge in you, in the sight of the children of mankind!”
The problem is that too many of my thoughts, and too much of my energy, gets spent on me. I don’t want to squander the time, talents and treasure He has entrusted to me, but I too often do. So when contemplating God’s goodness I need to pray that I would be convinced of His goodness and that He will never stop doing good for me even when how He defines what is good for me and what I define as what is good for me, differ. Life is just too short to be wasted on self.
One more thing, God’s goodness and His doing good brings Him delight, “I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul.” Now stop and think about that. Because of His steadfast love, His goodness and His doing good to His children, leads Him to rejoice and bless us even more in a land of faithfulness, because He is good, with every ounce of energy He has, focused toward us. Wow! This is almost too much to wrap my heart around. And it would have been if he hadn’t given us a new heart from His abundant goodness. “I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for their own good and the good of their children after them.”
So let us contemplate and then rejoice today that the LORD is Good!
God Bless y’all.
In His Grip,
Pastor Mike
