Photo by Christopher Sardegna
By Mike Chaffin
And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. Romans 8:28
One of my favorite sayings is “God is good all the time, and all the time God is good.”
Jesus goes on to talk about God’s goodness when teaching He is like a Father to us.
9 Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? 11 If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him! Matthew 7:9-11
But just like Paul does in our verse, Jesus throws a kicker at the end of this promise,
12 Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 7:12
And just like that the Bible takes us back to our 15th verse article which talks about our holiness and sanctification.
Paul adds that for all things to work toward goodness we must be called according to His purpose. We are to walk in the way God has for us. We are constantly told in the Bible to do God’s will. Jesus taught us how to do this. We follow Him, daily. We ask Him to fill us, lead us, guide us. He walks ahead of us, but never far enough to be out of sight. When we think He is, we need to check to see if we have run ahead of Him or fallen in a ditch of debauchery and quenched the Spirit.
The reason this verse is so high on the list of most popular verses is we all want good in our lives. God does bring it, for His children, but sometimes it’s not in the way we thought it would be. The highest good God ever did for us was to send His Son to die for us. Jesus loved us so much He willingly died for us so we could be filled with His Holy Spirit. Thank goodness we now have a way that leads to life. That’s as good as it gets.
Prayer: Dear Lord, thank you for your attention for our good. You made us in your image, you justified us in your sight. You gave us the Holy Spirit so we could have a shot at being holy as you are Holy. Help me to live for you. In Jesus’ name, amen.
* There is a website that conducted a search for Bible verses. They compiled a list of the verses in order of the magnitude of hits they got in their search. Some of these verses qualify as ‘people’s favorites’, while others might be on the list because they are some of the most important and most teachable words of God.
