Experience the goodness of God!

Yesterday, we started looking at how there is hope for any situation. The challenges in life… the difficult circumstances… no matter what you’re going through – nothing is too difficult for God! Amen! That’s really encouraging because sometimes we feel like it’s impossible to see change. Talking to a couple Christians from different churches I realize that by and large, most people don’t have a default that says, “nothing is impossible with God”. They have a default of, “wow, God? I wonder if you’re going to do anything to help me yet?”
 
Too often we don’t believe in the goodness of God like we should. He’s a good Father who’s got good plans for us and desires good things for us. We should trust him more but so often we don’t know because we aren’t convinced of His goodness. We don’t realize how good he is. And so we don’t receive that goodness. Too many people are expecting suffering and even believing for it; expecting negative things to happen. Jeremiah 32:27 says, “behold, I am the Lord. The God of all flesh. Is there anything too hard for me?” There’s nothing! The answer is no! There’s nothing too hard for the Lord! Luke 1:37 says, “for with God, nothing will be impossible.” You could turn that around and say, “without God, nothing will be possible.” You might be able to accomplish a little bit in your own strength, but you will never really shoot as far as you could without God.
 
Too often, when we get our backs against the wall, we’re either reaching out to God for help or we’re trying to dig ourselves out of a hole that most times we dug. The point is that God wants to help us when the going gets tough. And he wants to help us when the going is good because things can always be better than they are. No matter how negative your circumstances are, no matter how challenging your finances are, no matter how challenging the relationships are or your businesses or whatever the case is, God wants to help you get out of the situation that you’re in and get into a better situation. It doesn’t matter how good it is right now, God wants to take it to an even better place. You need to start raising your expectancy.
 
Most Christians are expecting very little to nothing. They’re even expecting negative things to happen. They’re expecting things to fail and that’s not faith. Faith is a confident expectation of good things, a confident expectation that what God says is true, a confident expectation that his promises are true and that he will deliver on what he said. Your faith releases God’s power. So often we don’t see God’s power released in situations simply because we’re not in faith for the right thing. We’re in unbelief releasing negative into situations.
 
Psalm 34:8 says, “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man that puts trust in him.”
 
I love that! Taste and see; tasting and seeing are experiences. The writer here, David, is saying that we can taste and see, we can experience the goodness of God. Tasting and seeing is a tangible experience. It’s not something mystical or imaginative. If I start telling you about this amazing steak that I had at this amazing restaurant and it was just cooked to perfection; it was just so tender. It was tasty…Oh, and the sides; the roasted vegetables and the this and the that… some of you are already hungry! But if I start talking like that, you can imagine it. You can maybe see it, and if you’ve experienced something similar you might be able to recall those experiences back to your mind and those feelings with that. And it brings back an experience for you. But if you’ve never experienced a good steak (which I pray for your sake you have) then you don’t really know what I am talking about. You’ve just heard about it.
 
A lot of Christians have heard about the goodness of God but they’ve never experienced it. They’ve experienced it to degrees, here and there, but they haven’t experienced the full flow of God’s goodness in their lives. It says, “taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man that trusts in him.” Trust is talking about faith. Trust is talking about relying on God. When we’re relying on God, it releases blessing in our lives. It helps us to experience the goodness of God. Every time we come into contact with the Lord, we come into contact with good because he is good. God is equal to good. He’s good all the time. So many Christians know that God is good intellectually, but not experientially. God wants you to experience his goodness in your finances. He wants you to experience his goodness in your health, he wants you to experience his goodness in relationships with other people and in your marriage and your relationship with your children. He wants you to experience his goodness in your business. There is not an area of your life that God doesn’t want you to experience his goodness manifested in the here and now.
 
And so I’m encouraging you just to raise your expectancy. Believe in the goodness of God, the believe that he loves you – just choose to believe it. And as you come to know his true character that he is good, it will help you to trust him more and then see the flow of his goodness in every area of your life.