Talking about God's Goodness...

Frank, my dad and I were JUST talking about how GOOD God has been to us throughout these past 2-3 weeks! In the midst of our grief, sorrow and exhaustion...we were encouraged by talking about the small ways we have seen God's hand at work in the details of my mom's brain cancer, me getting some time off (with pay), my sister coming out, my cousin coming out, the hospice nurse who has numerous years' experiece working with brain cancer patients...and on and on I could go!

And you know what? God was honored and praised by our speaking out loud about His goodness to us in all things. Did you notice I mentioned we are in the midst of our grief, sorrow and exhaustion? Understanding and acknowledging God...His goodness...His praiseworthiness...etc...is right, fitting and necessary at ALL times. For me, at this time, it is like when I used to get a cut or scrape and as my mom would apply the medicine (some yellowy stingy stuff), she would gently blow on the cut to ease the stinging of the medicine. It was comforting and helped the pain to be less.

This is MORE than just the power of positive thinking...way more! This is what children of God are supposed to do in all things. Philippians 4 talks about always giving thanks...and in 4:8, we are to think on the good things, the worthy things...anything of virture or praise. It is a comfort to the stinging bite of terrible circumstances to know God is at work, for our good. Read on! Planet Wisdom covers this very well today!

God is good. And, He is at work at all times, in the dirty details, in every area of our lives. Give Him praise and look at see that the Lord, indeed, is good!

I love you all & pray for you daily,
Mary

PlanetWisdom.com Devotionals

Talk Talk Talk about It Posted: 20 Jan 2009 04:00 PM CST "I proclaim righteousness in the great assembly; I do not seal my lips, as you know, O LORD. "I do not hide your righteousness in my heart; I speak of your faithfulness and salvation. I do not conceal your love and your truth from the great assembly." (Psalm 40:9-10) How can we possibly respond to the absolute goodness of God in a way that makes sense? In a way that fits? Yesterday, we saw that David's first response was to change his wants, to feel the desire to live for God. Now he says the next logical response is to talk about God's goodness. That makes so much sense to me, but I've noticed that most of us are either forgetful or just really shy when it comes to talking about how big God's goodness to us has been. We need to get out some solvent and unseal our lips so all kinds of words about God's goodness can come flowing out of us. We need to stop playing hide-and-seek with what we know from experience about God's love, about His mercy, about his goodness. Think: Do you ever want to talk about God's goodness and feel like your mouth is sealed shut for some reason? What could you do to make it easier to say something out loud to another person about how good God really is to you? Pray: Ask God to give you the desire and the courage to proclaim His goodness to other believers and maybe even to some non-Christians. Do: Make a plan to say out loud one good thing about God to another person sometime this week. Visit PlanetWisdom.com for more great resources!