Goodness & Faithfulness

In Genesis, Abraham gets this wild promise from God:

Then the LORD said to him, “Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and they will be enslaved and mistreated. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions.” Genesis 15:13-14

God literally promises His people enslavement, mistreatment, pain, and suffering. But, He doesn’t leave them with that because His promise concludes with victory over the people who will harm them. Sounds oddly familiar to Jesus’ promise in John.

“I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

We are PROMISED tribulation in this world. When we read the book of Job, we find out just how deeply God can allow pain and suffering and we are hopeful to find the answer as to WHY. But we never get that answer. We do get something so much better though, knowing God, knowing He is with us, seeing Him in and around us.

My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Job 42:5

You see, we never get to know the why, not fully. It is all part of God’s mystery. And to be blunt, it kind of sucks. But, when we walk through trials and we intimately know God, it is something that holds no comparison to anything else in this world. I would give anything to go back to those moments in my life, ones that were so painful, yet moments where I knew God so deeply. Where it was almost as if I had seen Him with my own eyes. We see this in the story of how the Israelites suffered at the hand of Egypt. We see trial after trial in the Bible. We see it in our own lives with what we face daily. You see, the pain and the suffering, this side of heaven, it will always be. There is no escaping it. But God’s faithfulness always prevails. God’s goodness always wins. He is good on His promises. And we see that character of God on every page of scripture. When we look deeply into our own lives, there is no denying how good and faithful God is.

But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly. Exodus 1:12

God, even in their suffering is making His promise to Abraham come to fruition. He is multiplying His people.

And because the mid wives feared God, he gave them families of their own. Exodus 1:21

When we remain consistent and faithful to God, even in the light of persecution, He blesses us, protects us, and provides for us beyond our wildest dreams.

God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them. Exodus 2:24-25

In our pain and suffering, God does not leave us or forsake us. He hears us, He is concerned for us, and He will make a way. If you don’t know the story of how this all ends for the Israelites, go get to reading all the way through Joshua. It is long and seems to get redundant and confusing, but reading it, you learn so much about who God is. I will give you some insight into how God begins to fulfill His promise to His people. It all begins with Moses a man who grew up in a broken home, who was disobedient and insecure. And yet, God chose him. He calls Moses to Him and makes this promise:

So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey – the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. Exodus 3:8

Moses is unsure, He questions God and this is God’s response:

“I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” Exodus 3:14

God, I AM, is dependable, faithful, constant, ever present, and unchangeable. He is in control and the circumstances of this world do not change that. He is the God who was, who is, and is to come. Our God has a plan; our God is at work. And as the waves of life hit us, the same is true for us as it was for the Israelites. Although Moses was great; He wasn’t Jesus. And when Jesus made His promise about overcoming the world, He fulfilled it on the cross. He defeated death. And in doing so, He has made a way for us to walk this earth, filled with dark and evil, in a way that is filled with love, joy, peace, and light. He sees us right where we are today. He loves us as we are today. And He is reminding us over and over again of His faithfulness and His goodness in our lives. He will never let us go. As we patiently endure the trials of this life, we can find joy simultaneously. We find hope in knowing that one day we will meet Jesus face to face. On that day He will wipe every tear from our eyes, He will wash us clean, and we will enter into an eternity where evil does not exist. Our patient endurance will become, “Well done my good and faithful one.”

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. 2 Corinthians 3:17-18

Love and blessings,