Relying on God Through Trials and Triumphs

Christians are committed to keeping the way of salvation focused on faith, not being good or bad–and rightly so. The greatest example we have of how to be good is God Himself.

Today…….I am asking all my prayer warriors to say a prayer that may help others. So many people are hurting right now. Many are struggling with finances and need jobs. Some are facing foreclosure and don’t even know how they are going to make it from week to week.. Many are lonely. .

Many are heartbroken. . Many are facing sickness and health is fading. . Some are dealing with difficult family members. Many have lost HOPE.. Tonight, let us put our prayers and faith together decree and declare breakthrough over our families. Financial miracles WILL take place. Jobs WILL be found. Our Bodies WILL be made whole & sickness WILL flee. Marriages and relationships WILL be restored. Family members WILL find Jesus. Heartbreaks WILL be healed. JOY WILL be restored and HOPE WILL be found. In Jesus Name. Amen!!!!!! Keep God First

A popular film critic recently reviewed all the movies he had seen over the course of his career and he made a list of the films.
He said these films are so bad that they’re good in some movies.
The plot is so weak, the acting so poor, the production so flawed that the movies are worth watching, just so weak and laugh at them.
And these movies have created a cult following for being so laughably bad.
They gather together to watch these movies, not because they’re good, but because they’re so bad.
Our world has a hard time distinguishing between good and bad.
Our cultural values are changing so quickly that virtues once prized are now scorned and behavior once condemned is now celebrated.
The Prophet Isaiah anticipated this when he wrote woe to those who call evil, good and good, evil and put darkness for light and light for darkness who put Bitter for Sweet and Sweet for bitter.
Social scientists are scrambling to try to redefine human goodness.
They have a hard time breaking free from all the traditional values.
In fact, in the USA Today article, are you a good person?
Morality experts say this is how to find out whether you’re a good person or not.
What does it actually mean to be good?
They write social psychologists and religious leaders say we see eye to eye on the big stuff.
We believe it’s good to be kind and fair and just it’s bad to cheat and murder and steal.
Evidence suggests we’re all born with some innate sense of morality and fairness which makes us sensitive to the distress of others in this post modern age of relative values.
I find this a fascinating admission.
Even non religious people instinctively know there is a moral standard somewhere in the universe and that good and bad are objective realities.
Even amid shifting morals and manners, we want to be good people, better people.
In fact, over the last two years, the Marist poll that chronicles our New Year’s resolution reports that being a better person has now topped the perennial favorite of losing weight.
Everybody wants to be a better person even more than they want to lose weight.
But goodness is so much more than the secular writers can convey.
Goodness is an attribute of God himself.
And until we see goodness as God is good, we really don’t understand it at all.
By the way, where do you think we got the English word? Good.
It is just God with an extra 01 of the first prayers we teach our Children to pray when they start to grow up in the faith is God is good.

God is great and we thank Him for our food. But when we say that, what do we mean?
What do we mean? When we say that God is good, the Bible presents this truth over and over again.
I could spend the whole time of my message just quoting you passages from the Bible where we are told about the goodness of God.
Exodus 34 6 says, the Lord, the Lord God merciful and gracious, long suffering and abounding in goodness First Chronicles, 1634 says, Oh, give thanks to the Lord for he is good.
Psalm 34 8 says, oh, taste and see that the Lord is good.
When I say God is good, I mean, he is gracious. I mean, he is merciful.
When I say that God is good, I’m talking about His perfection and his excellence.
But the more I study this word in the Bible, the more one central concept seems to jump out at me.
It seems to me that God’s goodness is conveyed mostly in his generosity.
Perhaps God’s quality of goodness means far more than his generosity, but it certainly includes his infinitely generous attitude toward you and me by nature.
God longs to bring blessing and joy to all of His creatures and even as fallible human beings, most people feel a sense of satisfaction when we’re able to do something for someone else.
What’s the source of that impulse?
Where does it come from, it comes from being made in the image of God.
God is the one who creates within us, an innate desire to help somebody.
Matthew 7-Eleven says, if you then being 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?
So I want you to think of the greatest pleasure you’ve ever felt in doing something for somebody else and then multiply it by billions.
And that is the heart of God in heaven as we consider His goodness.
Here is how it affects us.
Here are some derivatives from the goodness of God for us to use in our lives every day.
First of all, God is good, he provides for us.
We experience God’s generous goodness, by the way, he takes care of us.
Daniel Defoe has a famous novel we all know about is, the novel is called Robinson Crusoe.
It’s about a rebellious young man who through a series of misfortunes ends up as the lone survivor of a shipwreck on a deserted island.
Among the items he salvages from the floating debris is a Bible.
And as he reads this Bible marooned and desolate, Robinson, learns of the goodness of God who provides forgiveness for our sin and gives us an endless supply of grace to meet all of our needs.
And the young man joyfully trusts Christ as a savior and the island becomes sort of like a Bible college or a seminary where he is growing in his understanding of God through what he observes and through his Bible, and he learns that he has a God who is good.
But one day Robinson receives a terrible jolt, he spots a footprint in the sand on the island and he knows he isn’t alone.
After all, someone else is lurking nearby.
He also is aware of the fact that this is among the cannibalistic islands. Cannibalistic where they eat people.
Robinson becomes a fearful man.
He looks over his shoulder with every step, he’s afraid to go to sleep at night.
And he visualizes himself being captured, boiled and devoured all that former confidence in God, which was founded upon such wonderful experiences of his goodness had now vanished as if he who had fed me by miracles.
He wrote could not preserve me by his power, the provision which he had made for me by his goodness.
One day Robinson came face to face with the man who had made the footprint.
And in the course of the story, he shared the gospel with him and led him to Christ and Robinson named him Friday and the two became inseparable friends and Robinson was strengthened in his faith to know God’s goodness is truly able to provide for all of our needs.
Even on a deserted island, most of us struggle with various fears.
We’re not looking over our shoulder wondering where the cannibals are.
But many of us have anxieties and those anxieties often represent a lack of faith in God’s goodness.
We just don’t know if God cares and sometimes we may even verbalize that in our prayers.
God, are you watching? Do you know what’s going on? Do you really care?
The psalmist said I would have lost heart unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
I’m here to tell you today that no matter what the circumstances look like behind all of the mist of the unknown is this truth.
We have a God who is good. It’s remarkable to think about that.
But when we’re in the will of God through Jesus Christ, we will never face a genuine need for which God doesn’t give us a genuine provision, whether we’re stranded on a desert island or we simply feel that way the Lord will provide.
Think about this, the one who gave us lungs created air, the one who gave us stomachs, supplies food and water.
He who made us in his image, provided companionship and he who made us with eyes created spell binding vistas for us to enjoy.
He who made us with eternal souls provided a pathway to heaven through our Lord Jesus Christ, whatever our need, the goodness of God provides the answer.
Psalm 33 5 says, the earth is full of the goodness of the Lord at the beginning of this message, I quoted Psalm 34 80 taste and see that the Lord is good.
And we tend to interpret that verse metaphorically and spiritually. But there’s a literal truth to this.
Sometimes we need to taste something desirable and say this is from God and this is good.
Sometimes we need to behold a gorgeous vista.
And remember God is good, sometimes we need to smell a pleasing aroma. And remember that God is good.
He gave us five senses and his provisions come to us through all five of those senses to remind us of His goodness.
God is good. He provides for us.
Can we say amen to that is God our provider, amen.
No 2, God is good and he’s patient with us.
We see God’s goodness and generosity in His incredible patience with us.
In fact, in the Bible, the idea of God’s patience is frequently linked to the idea of his goodness psalm 100 verses four and five says, be thankful to him and bless his name for the Lord is good and his mercy is everlasting.
God never runs out of mercy. He’s a good God, the mercy of God represents his patience.
All the blessings of God can be organized, men and women under two headings, the grace of God and the mercy of God.
The grace of God is everything God gives you that you don’t deserve.
And the mercy of God is everything God withholds from you that you do deserve.
How many can give a happy amen that God is both gracious and merciful. His patience.
His mercy never runs out. His mercy endures throughout all generations.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t know how God puts up with us.
Have you ever prayed this prayer?
Lord, it’s me again and it’s the same thing again and it’s no better again than it was last time I was here.
And God says, ok, tell me about it.
You know, it’s like your child coming up to you after you’ve told them 100 million times not to do it and they keep doing it.
God never gives up on us.
The Bible says, when we need his wisdom, all we have to do is ask and he gives to all who ask without abrading them or without scolding them.
God never scolds us for coming to him with our need. He’s a patient. God.
The mercy of God is endless, infinite and it’s an outgrowth of God’s goodness.
Oh, give thanks to the Lord for his merciful.
If you think about it carefully, what do you say in your life and in the lives of the people, you know that there is more goodness than there is misery in the world.
Of course, there’s exceptions, there’s deep suffering in some parts of the world.
Some regions are racked with all kinds of pain, but where most of us live would you not say my life has more goodness than misery.
Isn’t it interesting how we fixate on the negative and forget the positive.
When Don and I started a church back in Fort Wayne, Indiana, we had some wonderful experiences there, but we had a few challenging ones too.
And there was a guy in this church who, I don’t know how to say this any other way.
He was after my head. He didn’t like me.
He, he, he got to the place where he was resistant to what we were doing.
I heard things that he was saying.
Now this guy was impressive because he was six ft six and he had white hair just like mine.
And whenever you walked into a crowd, you could see him.
What I found out I was doing is I was walking out on the platform to preach.
And before I even prayed, I was looking to find out where this dude was. Is he here?
You know, and I got so convicted about that one day, I was in my study and I looked over on the desk in my study and we had just produced a picture book of all the people in the church.
It was really a nice thing because you could put faces with names and all the rest.
And I looked at that book and all of a sudden it hit me, I was fixating on one man.
And here is a book full of the pictures of all the faithful people of God in our church.
I had the choice either to rejoice that God had blessed us with so many wonderful supportive people or to fix my attention on one guy who was causing me grief and all of us have that choice.
Do we not? We can either talk about the goodness of God or we can commiserate which means share our misery with each other.
The Bible says, as a father pities his Children. So the Lord pities those who fear Him.
He knows our frame and he remembers that we are dust.
In other words, God is not expecting perfection from us.
God is even good to those who don’t know Him.
Did you know that He’s good to those who don’t fear Him. He’s good to those who curse Him.
He fills the world with common blessings. We call it in theology, the common grace of God.
It’s available to the saved and to the unsaved.
It’s available to the good and the bad to the righteous and the unrighteous.
You don’t have to be a Christian to know that God is good.
The Bible says He makes his son rise on the evil and on the good.
He sends rain on the just and on the unjust God gives some of his goodness to all of us people and all of His goodness to some of us people and none of us deserve any of it no matter what group we’re in?
Bottom line is none of God’s people deserve his goodness.
Yet he has overwhelmed me with his goodness and he’s done the same for you.
He’s a good God. His goodness comes to us in the form of divine patience.
Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for his goodness and for his wonderful works to the Children of men.
The psalm is like a song that has a number of stanzas and the chorus keeps repeating itself and the Psalmist writes this and he talks about the struggles of his life when he gets done talking about it.
Here comes the chorus. All that men would give thanks to the Lord for his goodness, for his wonderful works to the Children of men.
And then he goes on and tells another story and he gets done with a little story and he comes back, all that men would give thanks to Lord for his goodness and for his wonderful works to the Children of men four different times.
He says that same thing. Look it up. It’s in verse 8 15, 21 31 in Psalm 107.
The same words. Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for his goodness and for his wonderful works to the Children of men.
And what that says to me is that no matter what’s going on in our life, no matter how hard it may seem to us, right?
Now, maybe you’re going through a difficult place. Maybe you’ve never been in a place like this before.
But if you look, you will see the goodness of God for, it’s everywhere.
It’s only when we block it out because we put our problems in the front of our mind and we forget how good God is.
Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for his goodness and for his wonderful works to the Children of men.
God is good. He provides for us and God is good.
He’s patient with us and God is good. He protects us. God is our protector.
God’s goodness is seen in the way he cares for us.
When I was ordained as a minister to the gospel.
Many years ago, I went through the process that they went through then and that we do somewhat.
Now I had to write a paper outlining everything I believed about doctrine and every word I wrote was evaluated by some pastors and professors who were on the ordination committee.
A number of Cedarville faculty members sat on that ordination council at my oral examination.
My father who was a pastor and my mother were present to hear me being questioned about my doctrinal understandings.
One of the men questioning me said, Mr Jeremiah, there is no statement in your paper of doctrinal positions on the subject of guardian angels.
Do you believe in guardian angels?
And before I could answer my mother spoke up and said, if he doesn’t, I do, I remember that.
It just jumped right out of it, just blurted right out of her mouth.
And my mother is not the kind of person who would ever do that. And it was so unusual.
So, I mean, I remember it to this day.
She was thinking in her mind of all the times God had rescued me from my foolish escapades, she would never have gotten me out of the childhood alive.
Apart from the, from, from God’s blessing, I was a curious child and yet the angels, the guardian angels were with me.
One time. For example, I was staying with my uncle on his farm in Pennsylvania.
He had a herd of milk cows along with all kinds of equipment and two huge silos next to his barn.
I was about nine or 10 years old.
And one day when I was playing around in the barn, I saw a ladder attached to the outside of one of those silos leading to a gate or a door at the top of the silo.
And I decided to climb up and walk around on the silage in the top.
What fun that was going to be.
So I climbed up the ladder and I started to step into the silo.
And when I looked down, there was nothing in the silo. It was empty. It was one long hollow tube.
I was way way up in the air and my head started to spin and I lost my nerve and I started shaking and I grabbed hold of the ladder with all that I had.
And somehow I got myself turned around and inched back down that ladder. It was so terrifying.
I can still feel my heart pounding after all these years.
Every time I see a silo, I feel a jolt in my heart.
One slip and I would have plunged to my death. You see, I climbed the wrong silo.
The other silo was full. This one wasn’t when I walked out, I got them reversed and I climbed the wrong one.
I’m sure my mom was thinking of a number of such times when she blurted out the answer of my ordination.
And psalm 34 says it this way, the angel of the Lord in camps all around those who fear him and delivers them oh taste and see that the Lord is good.
How do we know that goodness belongs to protection?
Because the scripture says, so if you don’t believe in the goodness of God, let me tell you something.
The reason you don’t believe in the goodness of God is because you do not know what you do not know.
If you knew what you don’t know.
You would see many places along the way where God by His goodness has reached out and kept you His goodness, protects His people.
And only when we get to heaven, will we be able to look back over our shoulders, if we’re allowed to do this and see all of the places where God’s goodness rescued us and we will praise Him because His goodness protects us and then God is good.
He guides our pathways, the goodness of God guides us in life.
Psalm 143 verse 10 says, teach me to do your will for you are my God. Your spirit is good.
Lead me in the land of uprightness. Here. The psalmist connects God’s goodness with his leadership in our lives.
And that we can connect this with a passage in the New Testament.
The Lord Jesus had something important to say about this in the sermon on the mount.
His words are worth pondering right here because they sort of provide a commentary.
God’s commands are a part of His goodness.
We have misconceptions about God because sometimes we read in the scripture that there are prohibitions to our faith and because people, they don’t like anything that conflicts with their idea of personal freedom.
Sometimes the rules they read about in the Bible are at odds with what they think God should be His goodness.
But the goodness of God is always demonstrated for us in the path He chooses for us in life.
And by the guidelines he provides for our belief, listen carefully.
Jesus said, enter by the narrow gate for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction.
And there are many who go in by it because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life.
And there are few who find it. If you read through that paragraph, you will discover.
There are two gates, a wide one and a narrow one.
There are two roads, a broad one and a difficult one.
There are two groups of people, the many and the few and there are two destinations, destruction and life.
Imagine you were untouched and untaught by the gospel.
And you’re trying to start out and find out which way you should take. You’re standing at the crossroads.
The broadway goes this way, the narrow way goes that way, you have no instruction from God.
Which road would you choose?
Most of us would look over on the broadway and see there’s so many people going down that road.
This must be the right way.
But we know that we would be wrong because that way while it is broad, the Bible says it leads to destruction, the broadway where everybody wants to get on the road and go there leads to death.
Only the narrow gate, the difficult road, the small crowd lead to eternal life.
And that’s the road God chooses for us.
If you’re a Christian today, God puts you on that road by his goodness and grace.
He says to us, I choose for you today. This pathway, I choose the narrow gate.
I choose the difficult way. I choose the few companions because I understand what’s at the end of the road.
There has never been a time in history where narrow gate theology as one person put, it is more out of vogue than it is today.
And yet as we walk with God does not life itself teach us that God is good and that his way is best.
The broadway as we observe it today is a lifestyle unencumbered by any moral guidelines.
It is free from spiritual stop signs and ethical speed limits. You can sample the pleasures of life.
You can live as you please. You can do things simply because they feel good.
This is the life of saying, let’s eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow. We shall die.
The narrow way has speed limits and has guard rails and those traveling to broadway, look it over us and they say come on, man, get a life loosen up color outside the lines.
Once in a while. They think those of us on the narrow road, we’re the weird ones.
We’re husbands and wives who decide to bond together for a lifetime for better or for worse.
We’re parents who give ourselves to our kids and we’re not just chasing dollars.
We’re Children who are respectful of our mothers and fathers.
We are families going to church trying to serve the Lord God and doing what’s right.
Even when it’s hard, it is difficult sometimes to be on the narrow road but not to be on the narrow road is to be headed toward destruction.
The broadway is the road to death.
People on this road tend to become bitter or disillusioned as they age. Have you noticed?
They lose the vigor of youth, they lose the passion of life as they face the prospects of the cemetery.
Anthony Bourdain, a 61 year old iconic figure and famous chef hanged himself in his hotel room in France.
And famous designer Kate Spade chose the same method to end her life in New York City.
At the age of 55, two people at the top of their game of his death.
Bourdain’s mother said she had no idea why he decided to kill himself.
He had everything, success beyond his wildest dreams and money, beyond his wildest dreams.
In one article that followed up on both of these suicides.
I read the following how powerfully it speaks to the discrepancy between what we see of people on the outside and what they’re experiencing on the inside, between their public faces and their private realities, between their visible swagger and their invisible pain.
These two deaths happened in a week when newly released government statistics revealed a staggering increase in suicides by Americans between 1999 and 2016.
It has increased by 25%. In other words, 45,000 people took their own lives.
All is not well on the broad road and so many who get on that road with all of their vision of what’s gonna be like when they get to their goal, they get to their goal and it seems empty.
It’s not what they thought because you see God has created us not ever to be satisfied with anything or anyone but Him.
And when we get on the narrow road, sometimes it’s difficult.
But behind it all is this vision of knowing God and being known by God and realizing that no matter what happens, God is there and God is good and all is, well, people who are on the narrow way as they mature, get closer to God as they come to the end of their lives.
You see the relationship deepen, you see the confidence in their understanding of God grow, they still bear fruit in old age and they stay fresh and green and proclaiming.
So God said, my friends, I’ve chosen this road for you.
It’s through a narrow gate and it’s a difficult way and there aren’t as many people going that way.
But at the end of the road that makes it all right.
This is the road that leads to life and the peace in his book of personal stories.
Just for a moment. I saw the light is the title of the book John Duckworth wrote of the difficulty of growing up in a pastor’s home.
He said, as a child, we got so tired of hearing about the Lord’s work.
It consumed my parents. I weren’t even sure they appreciated the sacrifices which they including us were making.
John made a mental list of the sacrifices.
He was putting up with cramped parsonages, not being able to afford restaurant meals, having to go to church all the time, having to move so much, having visitors in the house at all hours of the day and night.
And then there were the times he and his little brother had to sing a falsetto duet of wonderful words of life at the nursing home.
Hm. One day, a fire engine screamed past the parsonage and John’s dad jumped into the truck to follow it.
Knowing pastures were often needed during emergencies in small towns, the fire engine stopped at the Barnett House but there was no fire.
Apparently, Mr Barnett had decided to dig a basement under his house and somehow a Jack or a log had slipped and the house had collapsed on top of him.
No one knew whether he was dead or alive.
But the firemen hollered for everyone to stay back because they were afraid another jack or log would give way trapping someone else.
This young pastor’s son said, dad peered under the building and there in the dimness, he could barely make out the figure of a man hunched over head, bent the chest.
Dad wasn’t sure what Mr Barnett’s relationship to God was what if he was alive physically but not spiritually there might still be time to win him to Christ.
And to one side, a volunteer firefighter was preparing to crawl under the house to see if the man could be rescued.
And reverend Duckworth, this young man’s pastor father sank to his knees and it wasn’t a pray.
He crawled under the house and as neighbors gathered and stood in hushed silence, the two men risked their lives inching their way until they reached the trapped man.
After determining that he was dead, they crawled back out each moment risking the collapse of the house on top of them.
When they broke the sad news to the family.
John’s father caught one of the daughters who had fainted at the news.
He stayed with them for a long time.
Meanwhile, John said, my mother was anxiously standing by the phone waiting for updates.
And finally, my father, Reverend Duckworth came home and told the story in the days that followed, John watched as his dad cared for the bereaved family conducted the funeral, joined a team built that new home for the Barnett family.
And after that, John said his attitude toward the Lord’s work began to change.
I got used to small houses.
I learned a lot of good hymns by going to church all the time.
I learned to spot a bargain and saw a lot of country moving around so much.
And I learned that God’s work included things like crawling under houses, catching the faint waiting anxiously by the phone and pouring concrete.
I saw that all of us from preachers, kids to farmers, to firefighters, to moms enlisted in a vast army.
When we met the commander in chief, I found that we serve not because we live in parsonages, but because we live on the front lines.
A few of us get our names on the church sign but a lot of us don’t.
But all of us get to have the greatest job in the world serving the good God who loves us the most.
If you want to take the goodness of God and put it into action, you have to make the journey from His goodness to your service.
Why do we know God is so good?
Because He so wonderfully blesses us with who He is and what does he call us to do?
He calls us to serve. We shouldn’t have to stand up every time we do something around here and beg people to get involved if we know who God is and how good He’s been to us.
We should be standing in line trying to find a way to serve him. Amen.
And for all of you who do that for all of you who serve.
I’m here to salute you today. Thank you for expressing the goodness of God in the outreach of your life.
Don’t ever stop. I’m recommitted in my own life to be a servant.
How can I serve my God?
Better today if you’re here and you don’t understand all of this completely.
Maybe it’s because you’re on the wrong road.
There’s a kind of language you learn when you get on the narrow road, it’s not understood by those on the broadway.
I want to tell you something. I invite you today to make the transfer.
There’s still time for you to get on the narrow road. You can still make it.
God loves you and he sent his son to die for you.
And if you will give him your heart and acknowledge him as your savior, he’ll put you on the narrow road.
You’ll have some challenges, but you’ll have the joy of watching God work in your behalf as he always does.
He’s a good guy and he’s worthy of your trust.