Is God for Your Good?

Andy Stanley poses these two question in message #3 of his Right in the Eye sermon series which can be found at rightintheeye.org.  I find that every wrong or bad decision I’ve made is reflected in these questions.  These two questions are:

Is God for your good?

    or

Is God keeping something good from you?

If God is for my or our good, then everything He does and everything He says is for our best life.  All His directions, all His requests, all His Words have the single effort to produce what is good for us.  He can be trusted.

If God is keeping something good from me or us, then He can’t be trusted.  Everything He does or says is just for our suffering and its intent is unknown.  So, we need to figure out our own lives to determine what is best for us and what will complete us. 

This is the essence of faith.  It is also the original sin.  Satan told that woman that if she ate the fruit she would not die as God had said.  She would instead be as He was.  So, God could not be trusted to be for her good, but was keeping something good from her.  Instead, she and Adam would face death and separation from their Father.  Nothing good was kept from them, until they had no faith and decided they knew better than God and stopped following His Word.

As I look back at my own decisions and following experiences, I can say without question that this reflects life.  I either make decisions in faith believing God solely because He is God and has what is best for me or I don’t and do what I think is best and the best for my life is kept from me until I repent.  It is amazing to me how little man has changed since the beginning of all of mankind.

Decide today that God is for your good and have faith.  Know that all the good things in life only come from God and Him alone.  Nowhere else in life can your best life be found.