Overflowing Gratitude

Be cheerful with joyous celebration in every season of life. Let your joy overflow! And let gentleness be seen in every relationship, for our Lord is ever near. Don’t be pulled in different directions or worried about a thing. Be saturated in prayer throughout each day, offering your faith-filled requests before God with overflowing gratitude. Tell Him every detail of your life, then God’s wonderful peace that transcends human understanding, will guard your heart and mind through Jesus Christ.  Philippians 4:4-7 TPT

We ought to be doing what Jesus talked about in those verses. We ought to be ministering the healing power of God to the sick, casting out devils, sharing the Word of God with people, and helping them get delivered! 

God is ready and able to do those things through us. He just needs us to stop being so caught up in the world around us in this life and start paying more attention to His lead. 

He needs for us to walk with Him day by day, and allow the fruit of the spirit He’s put within us to flow out TO others.  

The more we do that, the more we’ll see revival in this earth. The more we do that, the more people will see God’s goodness through us and come running to Him because the fruit of Holy Spirit manifests in the way we speak to others. This includes the way we talk to friends, family, co-workers, store clerks, strangers on social media, and especially to those who are unkind to us…

God demonstrates His goodness in His creation. God saw all that He had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day. (Genesis 1:31 NIV). 

When God spoke and created the world and everything in it out of nothing, it was not just "good" but "very good." The goodness of creation reveals God's nature. He alone is perfect and, therefore, can only create what is good.

When trials come, make sure to take time to enjoy what God created. Step out into nature if you can and feel the warm sun on your face and watch the trees as they sway in the cool breeze. Listen to the birds' songs and marvel at God's beautiful creation, and delight in it! Hallelujah! 

God is equally good during our difficult times as He is during our good times. All God is, and everything God does is infinitely good. He powerfully works for the good of those who love Him, whom He calls according to His purpose to reveal His glory and eternal plan. Holy Spirit is involved in every little detail of our life and demonstrates His goodness in so so many ways. 

This week Praying about our time with God here tonight got me thinking - we rarely say "God is good" when tragedy strikes. How quickly we forget God's goodness during our trials or when we or someone we love receives an unfavorable medical diagnosis, experiences a devastating loss, or an ongoing hardship. 

Luke 18:19 NIV “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone.

So many in today’s culture are asking “If God is good, how can He allow bad things to happen? It's difficult to see God's goodness during the dark times in life. But God is gracious, compassionate abd has given humanity the gift of choice. We choose how we treat others how we  …..

And it is precisely during the heaviest times that we need to focus on God's goodness. Because we live in a fallen world filled with sin, and because God's ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts, we often can't understand what God is doing in our lives.

Hebrews 12:11 TPT  Now all discipline seems to be painful at the time, yet later it will produce a transformation of character, bringing a harvest of righteousness and peace to those who yield to it.

That’s because God wants us to trust Him - His ways are the best and always good. We may not get the answers to our "why's" during our lifetime on earth because all things belong to God. If it feels like God is withholding His goodness from you, please know that He is not - our Heavenly Father rebukes and corrects us but we can walk assured that when we turn to Him and repent of our wrongdoing, asking for His forgiveness, He reaches down for our outstretched hands - that is the very nature of God, His steadfast goodness.