Lesson 18: God's Love is Good
 
Psalm 69:13-18 "But as for me, my prayer is to you, O LORD. At an acceptable time, O God, in the abundance of Your steadfast love answer me in Your saving faithfulness. Deliver me from sinking in the mire; let me be delivered from my enemies and from the deep waters. Let not the flood sweep over me, or the deep swallow me up, or the pit close its mouth over me. Answer me, O LORD, for Your steadfast love is good; according to Your abundant mercy, turn to me. Hide not Your face from Your servant; for I am in distress; make haste to answer me. Draw near to my soul, redeem me; ransom me because of my enemies!“

When you and I are in times of trouble and we call out to God, like the Psalmist we are confident that God will not only hear us, but will come near and rescue us. The Psalmist is confident of this because God is good!

The first way the Bible reveals the Goodness of God is that He keeps on using us for His kingdom.

2 Corinthians 4:5, 7 "For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake…But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us."

 When it comes to the issue of being used by God, the power to live for God comes from Him. Our verses say He stores His powerful treasure in jars of clay, in us! Even though we are empowered by God to live for Him, we are nothing but a bunch of cracked and broken pots! Just look at the kind of people God used in the past: Moses stuttered, David’s armor did not fit, Hosea’s wife was a prostitute, Jacob was a liar, Paul was a murderer, Jonah ran from God, and we could go on making such a list.

 It is obvious that God does not use us because of our behavior but despite our behavior.

 Even though we know we are never going to be perfect, even as Christians, we still think God can only use us if we live perfect lives. So, when we do fail, and we will, we get tricked into thinking that God cannot use us anymore! We think we have committed the unpardonable sin. We might as well stop serving God and go crawl in a hole and die!

But stop! If God were to wait for us to become perfect before He uses us, then He would still be waiting! Please do not misunderstand me. I am not saying we should not be concerned about being obedient to God and try to refrain from a life of sin.

The Bible says if you want to continue in sin then you might want to make sure you really got saved in the first place. But the point remains. If the standard of behavior for God to use anyone was perfection, He would never have used David or Noah or Moses or Paul because they all did wrong things!

 God is Good! And out of goodness He not only saves us from our sins, but He keeps on using us spite of our sins!

Thought Question: Why do we seem to always have a reason to not serve the Lord?