God's Goodness

Why has God given you the things that He's given you?

Look around your life at your blessings. Your resources and your opportunities. Your encouragements. The special little things that are secret between you and God that remind you that He's talking to you. You know what I'm talking about. 

Why has God given you this? 

It's tempting to want to spiritualize it. To want to say that God has given you the things that He has so that your life can be a testimony to His goodness. So that others can look at what God has done for you and want Him to do the same for them. So that through you, others can come to know Him. 

Or maybe we say that God has given us what He's given us in order to prepare us. To set us up for whatever's coming next. Something bigger, something greater, something more meaningful than what we have now. Something that will bring Him even greater glory. 

Sometimes, we say that God can't not bless us. After all, if God is love, then goodness is just part of the package. If God wasn't pouring out blessings in our lives, then He wouldn't be God and what would be left for us to believe in? So we take His goodness for granted and simply think, "Of course!" 

But what if God actually had something in mind when He gave you all this goodness? What if there's one thing He wants for you through all these blessings more than anything else? 

There is. And it's this: 

He wants you to enjoy them (1 Timothy 6:17). 

Paul tells Timothy that God "richly" provides us with "everything" for our "enjoyment." 

Is it news to you that God wants you to be happy? 

It's news to a lot of folks, even to a lot of Christians. We can get so busy trying to do these big, grand things and make our lives massively epic for the Lord, full of glory and testimony and witness while at the same time trying not to anger Him, to lose His favor, to get smitten or cast into the streets where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth that we forget that one of the great aims of the Christian life is...joy. 

God didn't make Eden beautiful so that mankind would be miserable. He didn't paint the sky with multicolor brushes so that it wouldn't take our breath away. He didn't make the butterfly so whimsical so that we would scientifically break it down into its component parts. He didn't make food delicious as some kind of taunt. 

He wants us to enjoy our lives. He wants us to be filled with joy while we're here. He's invested in our happiness because happiness is a natural outworking of love. No one who feels truly, deeply loved the way that God truly, deeply loves us lives a miserable life. You can't do it. So like anyone in a loving relationship, God relishes doing all the little things that bring a smile to our faces. 

How would it change your life - and your relationship with God - to embrace this? To embrace the joy for which He has given you all that you have?