Last month I wrote about why God gives us good feelings. I tore down my misconception that good feelings are unnecessary and I shouldn’t ask for them. But this month another lie has surfaced.
Lie: God gives us just enough good gifts so we can make it through the trials He has planned.
Sometimes I imagine Him checking off a list of required gifts for each person, making sure they have the standard amount of good stuff so they can make it through the next day. The bigshots, the ones who go through tragedies and horrible health issues and persecution, they get a bigger checklist.
Silly of me, because that’s not how it works.
When God gives us good things, He isn’t just trying to fatten us up so we can make it through the next trial He knows is coming. Yes, we need joy and beauty and love to strengthen our wills when hardship strikes. We need to feel peace at times so we can experience God and trust Him when we don’t feel anything but numbing pain.
But that’s not why He gives good to us.
God gives good for the sheer joy of giving. Because that’s who He is. He is wildly generous, endlessly gracious. Not only is He “able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us,” (Eph. 3:20), He has already done that. Jesus was the ultimate good gift.
I might have quit with that, if I were Him. But still He gives us more good than we need because He loves to do it. I see that truth in my healthy baby girl. I taste it in my crème brulee that turned out just right. I feel it in the warmth of my husband’s hand.
“If you then, who are 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 7:11
Ponder this:
God gives good because that’s who He is, not to make room for hard stuff.
What extra good have you received today?