God, are you really good and kind? I haven’t believed God to be kind because of what I’ve walked through. So many compromises have taken root because of wounding, lies, and unbelief. Those “foxes” have been healed and removed only by me trusting His voice. Learning to trust those whispers of love and hope, and rooting out the weeds of unbelief in my heart.
This whole battle (the last 3 years) has never been about God taking something away; it has been about God leading me through a journey to recapture my heart and reveal His goodness and kindness to me. His love and His spoken word by the power of the Holy Spirit empower me to stand in the storm. His voice of love, hope, encouragement, peace, and “coming up higher” has cleansed the lenses of my heart from the dirt life has thrown at me.
Letting Go and Walking Into Kindness
One of my favorite current-day prophets is Lana Vawser. She has amazing teachings from God. As I’ve come to understand kindness and goodness, my eyes are open to all the emotions dictating our responses. “No matter what the reality in the natural looks like, our true reality is every word that comes out of the mouth of God. I live by that and not my screaming emotions, my circumstances, my false securities, or things going right in my life. I live securely and firmly in the revelation of His nature through His word and His whispers in my life.”
God’s kindness in Hebrew is the word ‘hessed’. It means to love or have acts of authentic friendship. It is also the idea of faithful love in action. In the Old Testament it refers to God’s loving kindness expressed in His covenant relationship with Israel. If we have the word ‘hessed’ at work in our lives, shouldn’t we be living above the circumstances and false securities present? Why can’t we grasp the fact we have a loving God who wants to draw us into a loving relationship?
Because we let the dirt of life weigh us down. We let our emotions and what the world says dictate our reality. Instead of believing what is true of God, we settle for less. God’s guidance restores and leads us into fullness. I love J.I. Packers’ quote on his goodness.
“Guidance, like all God’s acts of blessing under the covenant of grace, is a sovereign act. Not merely does God will to guide us in the sense of showing us his way, that we may tread it; he wills also to guide us in the more fundamental sense of ensuring that, whatever happens, whatever mistakes we may make, we shall come safely home. Slippings and strayings there will be, no doubt, but the everlasting arms are beneath us; we shall be caught, rescued, restored. This is God’s promise; this is how good he is.”
― J.I. Packer, Knowing God
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on Heather Shore
Featured Image by Ngô Thành Tân on Unsplash
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