Is God Really Good All The Time?

There is a saying I grew up hearing. “God is good all the time and all the time God is good.”

It’s nice, right? It’s nice to think God is good all the time.

I grew up in church, and I have known God for a long time. We’ve been through a lot together, and if I am being honest, I haven’t always “felt” this statement to be true. My head knew it to be true, but in my deepest sorrows and hardships, my heart questioned it.

“God, if you’re good and you love me, why are you allowing this bad thing to happen?”

“God, why aren’t you doing anything? Why haven’t you answered my prayer yet?”

“God, what do you want from me? Why are you making me suffer like this?”

“God, where is the relief? Where are the miracles? Where are YOU?”

Those are just a few of my prayers to Him throughout my life. Do any of those sound familiar to you?

It’s hard to understand God’s goodness in the midst of hardship. After all, He can do anything He wants. He can stop anything, heal anything, provide anything, and when He doesn’t, it’s hard to see Him as “good”.

I think it’s a big reason people have a hard time believing in Him. I have often heard it said that if God is real, then bad things wouldn’t happen, and evil wouldn’t exist, right?

I don’t say all of this for any other reason than to show that I get it! I understand doubting, I understand questioning, and I understand feeling let down by Him. All of the above is processing I have had to walk through, and some of it has been very recent.

As I have walked through the valley of doubt and question, here’s what I have learned and continually have to remind myself of.

His Word is true, He is true to His Word, and His Word is good.

In the beginning was His Word and He spoke His goodness into existence. Light was good. The sky was good. The seas and land were good. The sun, moon, and stars were good. All living creatures were good, yes, even man was good. Everything created by God was good, and it was His desire for us to dwell with Him forever.

In His goodness, however, He gave man a choice.

With that choice, man gave ear to the devil’s deceptions and desired to look beyond God’s goodness for something more. Because of this, death, pain, suffering, and sin entered the world. Thus, the fall of creation was not God’s doing, but man’s choice.

I have often questioned why He gave man this choice, but then quickly realized true love allows for free will. How could God allow all this suffering to come through one simple choice of eating a piece of fruit? Because He is true to His Word. He gave instructions to Adam from the very beginning, and what He said would happen did.

This choice cost us all greatly, including God. He paid the ultimate price because of this choice. He gave His Son to become our sacrifice. Jesus bore all of our sin by being tortured and going through the worst death imaginable to any human being, so that we could have another chance at living with Him in paradise.

“For this is how God loved the world: He gave His one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16

Don’t you see? From the very beginning, any good that can be found in the world exists only because God created it so. He is the only reason there is any of it all.

God has always wanted the absolute best for us because that’s what He is. He can’t be anything else. He is good all the time, and from the beginning, He has shown us that. What we have to be careful of, especially in times of hardship, is not letting the enemy deceive us from believing that truth. Our circumstances will never dictate the truth about God. He is good all of the time, period.

Suffering entered the world when sin did. Sin entered when man gave in to the devil’s deception. Any evil in this world is due only to the devil’s deceit and our willingness to believe it.

God’s love for us is so great that even in the destruction that we, as humans, caused, He gave His Son to suffer tragically in order to pay for our debt.

“Since He did not spare even His own Son but gave Him up for us all, won’t He also give us everything else?” Romans 8:32

Through Jesus’ suffering, God’s goodness prevails. The price He paid is now our gift to receive. It’s proof that God has always chosen us, even though we haven’t always chosen Him. It’s also His example to us that whatever suffering we face in our lives, He understands and only He can turn it around for our good. But, once again, we are faced with a choice and this choice we all have to make for ourselves. 

Do you believe it or not?  

Do you believe that God loves you so much that He sent His Son to die on a cross for your sins, rose again on the 3rd day, and is now sitting at the right hand of the Father, so that one day you can join Him in Heaven, too?

Do you believe that He would give absolutely anything to prove His love for you, and did?

Do you believe that God is good all the time and all the time God is good?

This choice is yours and yours alone, sweet friend. I pray you choose wisely.