(By: Norm Rasmussen)

If you've never done this yet, for your own spiritual benefit, you might consider doing so. Ask yourself what you truly believe:  'Is God truly good' or something other?'

There are times when trials and unsuspecting hardships comes your way like a sudden mile-high tsunami, and you may start feeling like God may be having a 'bad hair day' along with a change of life 'hot flash,' and the only way He can feel good about Himself evidently is to unleash pain on innocent victims such as yourself and loved ones around you. Those are the times when everything in your brain may wrestle with your former assurance that God is a 'Good God,' and you begin to rethink the whole matter, and perhaps in a very weak moment, you reach a faulty conclusion that He's a 'Good God when He wants to be, but the problem IS, He doesn't always WANT to be right NOW, because if He DID, all this pain and hardship wouldn't be happening, would it?!'

This is deadly thinking, dear reader. DEADLY!

There is a spiritual battle raging on this planet and the intended victims are primarily God's people and their loved ones. Why God allows Satan to inflict havoc and destruction upon God's people at times is the most difficult thing in this life to come up with answers to. Simply because we are only able to see things from our perspective, and not from heaven looking down - through God's eyes - we are extremely limited with knowing all the facts at hand, and in so many cases, we must simply trust that God is working out His plan for the human race, in heaven, and it will all make perfect sense once we're on the other side.

In the middle of all this seeming evil madness at times happening on planet Earth, let's ask ourselves a couple of very important questions:

'Is God confused about His goodness?' Or asking it a little different way, 'Does God ever question just how good He is?' I'm totally convinced there's not a doubt in His mind of just how good He is.  However, Genesis 6:5-6 reveals a time when God evidently had to question just how merciful He should continue to remain when it came to the human race:

Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. So the Lord said, 'I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.

It was after that God sent the flood, and only a few were saved, those being on the ark Noah built. In God's continuing mercy, however waning it may have been, He allowed the human race to have another chance, no doubt having the cross that Jesus Christ would ransom His life on in the center of His thoughts the whole time, and the glories that would follow in the far away future.

Imagine if you can how many times God has looked out across vast groups of people on this planet since the great flood, and questioned within Himself just how merciful He should remain concerning the evil that ravages entire nations? If we only knew.

Yet God has set His plan in motion to one day do away with evil upon this planet as well as in spiritual realms around this planet. Before that plan is fully executed, He realizes - and I believe He wants His people to soberly and responsibly realize - things are only going to grow more evil. Thank Him for pockets where gross evil is not currently prospering, because it can change so quickly. Giving man free will is His greatest delight when used to follow after New Covenant Biblical Truth. When it is not, it gives Satan mighty, mighty influence in the affairs of entire groups of people, cities and nations, until Christ returns to put a complete end to it. 

Babies are born deformed, sick and diseased; often dying only hours or weeks later. A Christian child who was planning to be a missionary or a Pastor one day is killed in an untimely accident. A teenager's mind is destroyed with drugs and spiritual deception. A son or daughter is killed in war. The baby we held in our arms and had such high hopes for spends years behind prison walls for reasons we sometimes simply can make no sense out of. We are faithful in ministry to God's call, only to struggle every waking moment wondering why God doesn't provide funds and/or better living conditions. This list can become nearly endless, the pain God's people have and are currently experiencing.  

Is God truly good? Yes, God is truly good! By faith we mentally declare it, because to give second thoughts to the doubts Satan bombards us with is surely spiritual cancer at its most deadly. To begin allowing painful circumstances happening to us and others be the means whereby we determine God is not good can be like taking daily small doses of spiritual cyanide pills.  

Rather, God is wholly good because He has given each of us a chance to be born on this planet, though many times in painful moments we may wish He never would have allowed it to happen. Yet what we can fail to realize in those weary moments is that a time is coming when all pain will be put behind us, at least for those who choose to follow after New Covenant biblical truth wisely applied.   

Maybe, just maybe, that little child who was taken away from us is so thankful to be in heaven, away from the evil on this planet. Maybe, just maybe, that teenage child we had such high hopes for but whose body now lies in the grave has no regrets in the heavenly places where evil is not allowed.  

Each of us who remain on this planet, by the help of the Holy Spirit of course, can help God's cause to combat evil. All of us are given the weapon of prayer to help restrain evil and bless God's people.  Our confidence in prayer may greatly wane at times, yet any regular reader of God's Word realizes that the Holy Spirit is constantly exhorting us to not give up on prayer and believing that God both desires it from us and obligates Himself to respond to it when prayed unselfishly, in accordance with His will in any and every situation.

For those who are firmly rooted in God's New Covenant Word, a time is coming when we each will leave this planet and very likely leave the battle of good and evil to those we leave behind, and to the angels that assist them in the battle. Who but God knows, maybe we'll even get to assist still in this battle between good and evil on the other side, if God wills and we are able to rise to the task.  

Is God good, really? Yes, He's really good. He's good in that He has promised that He refuses to let evil win in the end. Because He is good, evil will one day be totally done away with, and it will not be a factor anymore. For those who refuse to stay sidelined in this battle for very long to try to restrain evil, God promises in His Word that He will reward us greatly through eternity for giving all we gave while here on earth to fulfill His call on our lives to stay engaged in the battle.

Stay in the battle, weary soldier of Jesus Christ. You are so greatly needed, and one day, you will be generously rewarded by God.  

"And behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to every one according to his work. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last." - Revelation 22:12-13 

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Remember:  All that we do in this life comes back to our God-given purpose which is to serve and glorify God. The money and assets we accumulate, the fame and power we've attained or seek to attain - all of the things of this nature will one day pass away, but those lives of others we impact for Jesus Christ will last for eternity, and we will be rewarded for the part we helped play by impacting those lives ... for eternity. (Matthew 6:19-20 is our assurance)