Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good! And evening passed and morning came, marking the sixth day. Genesis 1:31
Dear People Who Keep Company with God,
In the beginning, God created the heavens and earth. He declared that His creation was good six times in the first chapter of Genesis. He called all creation good. Everything that God created is good because He is good. The first revelation of God in the Bible is that He is the creator, and He is good. When Scripture speaks about God being good, it characterizes God’s goodness in two ways. One has to do with God’s character, and the other focuses on His actions. Psalm 119:68 captures both when it says of God, “You are good, and You do what is good.” James tells us that out of His goodness flow the blessings that God has made available to humanity. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.” (James 1:17-18).
Yet the devil entered and brought corruption into God’s good creation. Disguised as a shrewd serpent, Satan came and tempted Eve. The Apostle Paul warned the Corinthian Church about this very thing. “But I fear that somehow your pure and undivided devotion to Christ will be corrupted, just as Eve was deceived by the cunning ways of the serpent.” (2 Corinthians 11:3) How did the serpent deceive Eve? Satan tempted Eve by getting her to doubt God’s goodness. Satan focused the woman’s mind on the realm of flesh and what she did not have in the garden. When she gave attention to this, she lost sight of what she had. Today, the media paints pictures to provide us with a focus. When we continually look at everything wrong and what the world offers, we cannot see everything we truly have.
The message of the enemy of our souls hasn’t changed, and if you entertain it, life and joy will drain out of you. The goal of Satan is to cause us to doubt, misunderstand, and be suspicious of God. The enemy wants us to forsake Him and take our lives into our hands as Adam and Eve did. His message comes in thoughts and words put in a way to get us to question the goodness of God. If God is not good, He is not worthy of being believed, worshiped, or obeyed.
But Jesus has come to show us what the goodness of God is all about. Jesus declared, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9) Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 1:20, “For all the promises of God in Him [Christ] are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us.” That means all the good and perfect gifts of God come to us through our relationship with Jesus. By nature, Christ longs to bring joy, peace, and blessing to us. He is always good and does what is right (Psalm 25:8). If you desire to know and experience God’s goodness, you can find it in the person of Christ. In Him, goodness and mercy will follow you all the days of your life.
Many Blessings, BW