The world vacillates between good and evil. Many things fall somewhere between the two, with people generally rooting for one side or the other. But some things are neither good nor evil. Such things are a matter of preference—favorite colors, foods, even sports teams. Every day we fight the greatest battle of all, the battle for our eternal souls, the battle between good (light) and evil (darkness).
Many who have experienced darkness (depression, imprisonment, spiritual attack) describe how debilitating that evil is. Only God can rescue people from total darkness. Jesus brings people to Himself and into the light. Bible-believing Christians know that evil must exist for there to be goodness. And for us to recognize goodness, there must be a supreme example of it. God reveals the supreme plumbline of goodness, in the Bible. He is the perfect example—God is pure goodness. God created everything, and He said it was good, but humanity, He deemed very good! This is the heritage we have through God—His absolute goodness, and our being made in His likeness and being made very good. But in our humanity, we are open to darkness.
In an ad for beauty products, one famous TV personality extols watchers, “Just trust me.” Unfortunately, many people do so because they are naive. They trust those whom they idolize. Too many are duped out of their hard-earned money, sometimes even their life savings, by those professing to be Christian leaders. Anyone who leads another astray and further from God is not trustworthy. Only the honorable and godly are worthy of our trust. As we get older and wiser, we realize that all people fall far short of the glory of God.
Only God is perfectly good and worthy of our trust. From the Bible, we learn that God is holy and that His name is above all names. In the Old Testament, His followers believed that His name was too precious to even whisper. Today the names of God—Father, Jesus (Son), and Holy Spirit—are not only held in contempt but they are also curse words. We know that taking God’s name in vain is a sin which must be repented of and turned from, but if we do not know what God deems sinful, how can we know what requires repentance and a change of heart?
Bible-believing Christians reach a point where they realize that the best that they can do for God is to give Him their gratitude and praise for all that He is and all He does. They know that their obedience is important, but their heart’s attitude and what overflows from it is even more important to God. This faithfulness touches Him like our grovelling to be good and do good works cannot. Perfectly holy, righteous, and just in every way, God knows we can never be perfect like He is. He knows the evil our hearts harbor and He knows when our hearts belong to Him. We demonstrate our understanding of His goodness and grace when we revere Him.
God tells us in the Bible that we will have trouble in this world, but we should be encouraged because He has overcome the world through Jesus. God wants us to stand strong in our faith so that we can withstand the evil of the world, the devil, and our fleshly desires. We can weather all challenges when we understand through the prompting of the Holy Spirit how marvelous God is and just how much He loves us. Then we depend upon Him and trust Him first to know what constitutes goodness and anchor ourselves in His goodness. God is always with us and carries us through our heartaches and suffering because He understands and grieves with us in our pain. O how awesome is the great goodness of God.
Jesus through His Spirit leads us to Our Father. He knows us like no person can, and He knows how our story ends. When we embrace God’s truth, we have the real freedom that only God provides, and we know what goodness is because we know God’s perfect goodness. The world and those of it cannot win because the godless world can never know what goodness is. While there may be hundreds of times in our Christian life when we feel powerless, even hated by most around us, we are never without prayer. We can always silently lift our prayers to our loving Father who is ever-present and active. This is true intimacy—being in God’s tender care and knowing that His goodness is overcoming the evil of the world with His strength and in His time.
