The Godness and Goodness of God (episode 27)

0:00 Do you love a prodigal? Do you feel like you are lost in a scary and endless wilderness? Welcome to the When You Love a Prodigal podcast. I am Judy Douglass and I spent more than 15 years in that wilderness. I believe together we will discover help and hope for your journey. Our son had a lot of questions for God, hard questions. Who was his dad and why didn't he want him? Why did his mother whom he loved always choose her addictions over him? And why did they, whoever they was, take him away from his mother? And then why couldn't he just stay with his grandparents? Why was he living with us, these people he hardly knew?

0:56 We had similar questions. Those things had made for a really painful wounded life in his early years. I imagine you also have some hard questions about the hard journey you were on. If we are to trust God in this challenging journey with our prodigals, we need to see that he is trustworthy. Last week we looked at the glory of God, trying to get a little grasp of what that means and why that would help us to trust. Even in the face of pain and suffering, the kind of pain that raises questions and doubts within us, God is totally, utterly and completely trustworthy. Let's discover, grasp, and know this trustworthy God at a much deeper level. From his glory last week, let's go further and let him speak for himself to tell us a little of who he is. Along the way, I will make small attempts to bring these words home to us regarding our lives with our prodigals. God has a lot of names and these names reveal his godness. I like that word. It shows how much he is God. The Bible is full of names that different authors have given him to identify him and

2:30 what he's like. But sometimes God himself has told us of his names. I'm just going to mention a few of them, but they will help us have a picture of who God is and how we can trust him in that. God said to Moses, I am who I am. This is what you're to say to the Israelites, I am has sent me to you. God's name is I am. He is the eternal present tense. He has no beginning or no ending and he is with us all the time. What an incredible promise from the God who created it all. A second name that God has given himself is El Emuna, which means the faithful God. Know therefore that the Lord your God is God. He is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commands. Wow. Scripture also tells us that God must be faithful because he must be true to who he is. So he said, I am a faithful God and so we can trust him that he will be faithful to whatever he said. Another name of God that he's given himself is El Gabor, which means the mighty God. For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord

4:05 of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He's above it all. In God's conversation with Moses here, when he gives the Ten Commandments a second time, he reminds Moses that he is a mighty God. The children of Israel had just made and worshiped a golden calf, a paltry idol, but we don't love and serve an idol. We love and serve the true, mighty and awesome God. Another name God's given himself is Jehovah Rafa, God the healer. He said, if you listen carefully to the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep his decrees, I will not bring on you any of these diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord who heals you. Wow. Certainly you and I have areas that need healing and without a doubt our prodigals have areas that need healing. Some of them are physical, some of them are woundedness from the past, some are just emotional, some are serious addictions. So there's a lot of healing, mental illness, all of this. God says, I am Jehovah Rafa, I will heal you.

5:37 He also says his name is Jehovah Sid Knau, our righteousness. He says to the Israelites, you must observe my Sabbaths. This will be a sign between me and you for the generations to come. So you may know that I am the Lord who makes you holy. We know we can't make ourselves holy and our loved ones are far from holy, but our God says, I will impart my righteousness to you. Wow. Not worthy of that for sure, but God is so generous. These names of God add to our picture of his magnificence and his gifts to us. But let's consider another image of God's godness. After Job, I'm sure you know of Job, had suffered greatly both from Satan's attacks and all he'd done to destroy him and his family and his good friends' helpful or not so helpful words, God himself comes to Job with a dizzying interrogation.

6:54 Job chapters 38 to 40 are pure poetry, profoundly reminding us that God is beyond our comprehension. Here are the first verses of Job 38. I love this. If we had time, I would read all of 38, 39, but just a few verses here. Then the Lord answered Job out of the storm. He said, Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man. I will question you and you shall answer me. Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation?

7:37 Tell me if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know. Who stretched a measuring line across it? Or on what were its footings set? Or who laid its cornerstone while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy? Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place? And I said, This far may you come and no farther. Here is where your proud waves halt.

8:24 God goes on. He says, Have you ever given orders to the morning or shown the dawn its place, that it might take the earth by the edges and shake the wicked out of it? What is the way to the abode of light? And where does darkness reside? Can you take them to their places? Do you know the paths to their dwellings? Surely you know for you were already born. You have lived so many years. God has more questions for Joe. Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail, which I reserve for times of trouble, for days of war and battle? What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth? I love this one. Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain and a path for the thunderstorm to water a land where no man lives, a desert with no one in it, to satisfy a desolate wasteland and make it sprout with grass? Does the rain have a father?

9:37 Who fathers the drops of dew? From whose womb comes the ice? Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens? When the waters become a hardest stone? When the surface of the deep is frozen? God goes on for two chapters. Then at the beginning of chapter 40, he pauses and he says to Joseph, will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him? Let him who accuses God answer him. Then Job answered the Lord, I am unworthy. How can I reply to you? I put my hand over my mouth. I spoke once, but I have no answer. Twice, but I will say no more. I imagine that Job fell on his face, joining Moses, Joshua, Daniel, John, and others who when confronted with the incomprehensible reality and glory of God fell on his face, as should we. But what about the goodness of God? We know that he is God, but is he good? The real question is, if God is really God, if we can believe the godness of God who is powerful and in control, is he evil or is he good?

11:12 Does he care about me and my prodigal? Can I trust him? Certainly as lovers of prodigals, we sense at least two hard things threatening our grasp on the goodness of God. One is our constant exposure in this age of instant information to the horror going on in the world. And the other is our frequent, even constant struggle with so much pain, fear, confusion, and doubt. So we ask, is God really good? We have loved ones who are praying for the Lord, we have loved ones who are praying for those who go to prison, who destroy their lives with drugs and alcohol, and even take their own lives. We seek help for mental illness, and we raise children our prodigals were unable to care for, and so much more. Where is God in all of that? Is God really good? Last week we saw tiny glimpses of the blinding glory of God, and just now we have observed the reality of his unfathomable godness. Hopefully our minds and hearts have been so expanded by the so much more that God is and does that we have made a place, a space, for believing that he is truly

12:48 good. Here are some helps to help us understand his goodness. Over and over scripture assures us that God is good, and all he does is good. Here are just a few, very few, of these promises. From Jeremiah, I will make an everlasting covenant with them, God says. I will never stop doing good to them. Did you hear that? I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me so they will never turn away from me. I will rejoice in doing them good, and will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and soul. Did you see that? It says, he says, it gives God joy to do good to us. Those verses help. From David, taste and see that the Lord is good.

13:49 Blessed is the one who takes refuge in him. And also from David, you Lord are forgiving and good, abounding in love to all who call to you. In the hundredth Psalm, we read, for the Lord is good, and his love endures forever. His faithfulness continues through all generations. And in Psalm 119, speaking to God, you are good, and what you do is good. Teach me, teach me. And again from David, the Lord is good to all. He has compassion and all he has made. I love the thought that God has compassion on us and on our loved ones, and he does good to them and gets great joy from it. You know, God works for our good in ways we cannot see. As my children were growing, I was truly intentional about doing good to and for them.

14:59 They liked and appreciated many of the good things I did for them. Today, I'm doing good for one of my grandchildren, who's turning five. His gifts have been sent ahead, but he will enjoy them, I think. But some of the good things I did for my kids, they didn't like particularly, and they said so. My good didn't match their good, but I was wiser than they were. Some of the good I did they never saw. They didn't know what else I was doing for them, including praying for them. I was always working for their good, even when it was invisible. Now hold on to that thought.

15:45 In a previous episode, I mentioned the book, Hind's Feet on High Places, the story of Much Afraid and her journey to the high places to be with the Good Shepherd. In this one particular episode, or chapter in that book, she gets lost in a dense fog, and she has no idea where she is and where to go. She can't see anywhere around her, and she's afraid. And then she remembered that the shepherd said, if you need me, call and I'll come. So she said, shepherd, help, I'm lost, and I don't know where I'm going or how to get there. And he was there, just like that.

16:33 And he said, even in the fog, I'm working. Even if you can't see what I'm doing, I'm working. And this is part of getting you ready to live in the high places with me, the Good Shepherd. The same is true for us. Our God is always working for us and for our prodigals, even when we can't tell if anything is happening or not. Now, here's another surprising evidence of God's goodness. God's suffering demonstrates his supreme goodness. Huh, really? Tim Keller, author of The Reason for God and many other books, says the above thoughts about the fact that his suffering is an evidence of his goodness, and the things that we've talked about. That's been helpful, but it's not enough. In his blog, My Faith, the danger of asking God, why me? Why is this happening to me? Keller reminds us that God's original creation did not include suffering and death. Those came by our choice to live for ourselves. Keller writes, but God did not abandon us in that choice. Only Christianity of all the world's major religions teaches that God came to earth in Jesus Christ and became subject to

18:05 suffering and death himself, dying on the cross to take the punishment of our sins, so that someday he can return to earth to end all suffering without ending us. Do you see what this means? We don't know the reason God allows evil and suffering to continue or why it is so random, but now at least we know the reason isn't what it can't be. It can't be that he doesn't love us. It can't be that he doesn't care. He is so committed to our ultimate happiness that he was willing to plunge into the greatest depths of suffering himself. Ultimately, God's willingness to suffer and sacrifice through the life and death of his son demonstrates exceedingly a goodness in his being, his character, his essence that is trustworthy.

19:08 So we have explored evidence of the godness and the goodness of God. Are we beginning to get where we can really trust him? Think about this. The same God who gave Job a tutorial on his vastness and power is also the one who keeps a covenant of love with you and with me. How might this truth help instill deeper trust within you toward God? What do you imagine your good God is doing behind the scenes on behalf of you and your loved one, maybe even today? God bless you. Thank you for joining me today on the When You Love a Proud Girl podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe, rate, and review the show on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. Your review helps the show reach more people with the hope and encouragement of Jesus. Don't forget, take a look at the show notes and for more helpful information, resources, and books, check out judydouglass.com.

20:22 That's Douglass with two S's. You can find me on Facebook and on Twitter and Instagram at JudyDouglass417. Until next week.