“My dad’s cancer is in remission! God is good.”

“I was offered a promotion! God is good.”

“My daughter got into her first-choice school! God is good.”

This language is so common to the Christian vernacular that it feels sacrilegious to critique it. But these types of statements fuel the premise that God is good when He provides the outcome we are seeking. We humans too often equate God’s goodness with transient, earthly outcomes! The purpose of this article is not just to convince you that God is good when you face times of trouble, but to challenge you to look at the language you use to talk about God during the hills and valleys of your life. 

As Christians, we are God’s image-bearers and we are tasked with representing Him accurately to a lost world. And the truth about God’s goodness is that He is good all of the time. He is the personification of good. He is the word’s very definition. Without him, there would be no goodness in the world. All the things in this world that we call good, family, money, food – they are good because God allows them to be so. God is good every day when He bestows all of us with common grace, believer, and non-believer alike, which allows us to enjoy aspects of the world He created. Things like mountains, beaches, and sunshine. In addition, the fact that God has chosen any sinners to receive saving grace through His Son Jesus Christ is good. It is so good; it is called Good News!

Romans 8:28 tells us, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” I grew up in the church, and as a child, I ignorantly thought this verse meant that, as a Christian, all the things I wanted to work together for my good, would occur. And when they didn’t, I wondered what I did wrong. I didn’t understand until I was older, that God’s and my definition of good might not be the same.

God is always working in our lives, weaving an eternal story far bigger than we could understand this side of heaven. Nothing happens to us that is outside of His sovereign control. This eternal, big-picture perspective on our lives helps us to drown out the lies that threaten our satisfaction in God. Yes, life can be bad, but God cannot.

The current situation of the COVID-19 pandemic has affected everyone in some way. We may not understand how God could be good when so much bad is happening. But this is the time to dig into our faith, not abandon it. In this abundantly hard time, seek the Lord. Although our current life circumstances may not look the way we would want them to, we can faithfully echo the words of King David (Psalm 34:8), “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!”

Tara Jean Moore is a researcher who recently left the world of clinical drug trials to homeschool her children. She grew up in Florida, where she still resides with her husband of ten years and their two boys. She is the content creator behind her Instagram ministry page @restlessresting