some thoughts

Thou hast made me what I am, and given me
  what I have;
In thee I live and move and have my being;
Thy providence has set the bounds of my habitation,
  and wisely administers all my affairs.

Excerpted from God the Source of All Good, in Banner of Truth’s Valley of Vision - A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions. (Highly Recommended.)

I often don’t want to attribute what I am and what I have to God–I have so many faults, it seems almost dangerous to do so. Yet, when I look up from the present muck and take a long look at the path behind me, all the grace given me in the past, it helps me to trust him for not only the future–but also for the present. How is it so easy for us to doubt his absolute goodness? How insidious is the devil, to whisper that all God’s goodness is just being stored up as a testimony against me to increase my condemnation at that great day?

I doubt the devil cares much if we believe that God is good; it seems his fight is against our believing that God is good to us. Martin Luther wrote that “Christianity is a religion of personal pronouns,” ‘My God, My Saviour.’ He also wrote that “The greatest injustice we can do to God is to imagine that He does not love us.” Jonathan Edwards wrote about this–this personal application and experience of God’s goodness–in his Religious Affections:

For God’s promises and oaths, let them be as sure as they will, cannot give strong hope and comfort to any particular person any further than he can know that those promises are made to him. And in vain is provision made in Jesus Christ that believers might be perfect as pertaining to the conscience, as is signified, Heb. ix.9, if assurance of freedom from the guilt of sin is not attainable. (Works, Vol. 1 [Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1974], p. 257. Also available online at CCEL.)

For me, at least today, my fight is not against the truth that God is good; but against the idea that God’s goodness isn’t available to me. But He is; so let the devil come with his accusations–he’ll be given neither credit nor place–for “it is written”:

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for wholeness and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me. When you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile. (Jeremiah 29:11-14, ESV)

Thank you, Father. You are so good to me. “My times are in your hands;” help me embrace my present situation–my present world–as Bonhoeffer defines it; - “the concrete sphere of responsibility given to [me] by and in Jesus Christ.” Help me to be faithful in the here and now, trusting you fully for whatever you’ll bring tomorrow. As it’s been said, “the peace that surpasses all understanding doesn’t come from knowing what our future holds–it comes from knowing that God holds our future.” Help me to see that you hold my present, as well as the often too far-off future. “I believe Lord; help thou mine unbelief.”

Impress me deeply with a sense of thine
  omnipresence, that thou are about my path,
  my ways, my lying down, my end.