Today's episode is all about the goodness of God and asking Him to reveal it in our hearts. I will be pairing this with prayer, scripture, and reflection.
This episode is number 6 of 9 episodes about the fruit of the Spirit. In the first five episodes we went over love, joy, peace, patience, and kindness. If you haven't checked out those episodes, go check them out first and come back to this because all of these episodes are going to go hand in hand with the fruit of the Spirit. To really take this journey of transformation with me, you need to make sure you check out each episode and do the reflection on each episode. I know that if you take this journey with me to really dive deep and reveal the fruit of the Spirit in our hearts, that it can and will transform your heart.
First I want to say a quick prayer to reveal the goodness of God in our hearts:
Lord I pray that you lift up every single person reading this right now. I pray that you open up our hearts to see your goodness and that you reveal your goodness in our hearts. I pray that you open up our eyes to see the truth of your words, you open up our mind and our ears to you Lord. I pray that in every aspect of our life that we're seeking guidance from you and letting you lead, guide, and direct us through the right paths and through the calling that you've placed in our hearts. I pray that you just wrap your arms around each and every single person reading this right now, just show them so much love, and reveal your goodness to them. I love you so much Lord. In Jesus' name, Amen.
Now that we have our hearts open to the goodness of God, I'm going to get straight into some scripture:
17 As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. "Good teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" 18 "Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good-- except God alone."
-Mark 10: 17-18
I wanted to say these verses first, because when I was going through and trying to map out this episode for you guys and get scripture, reflection, and all of that on goodness, I was really having a tough time with trying to come up with an episode on revealing goodness in our hearts. I know that goodness is, "righteous action or doing what is right," which we do learn to do what is right by studying our Bible and knowing the truth of God's words, but we're all human beings and we all are sinners. Just like we see in this verse here in Mark, "no one is good except for God." God is the only one that is truly righteous and truly full of goodness, so I really wanted to emphasize that in this episode here. Once we see the goodness of God, then that will help us to be able to learn the truth of God's word and be able to act righteously or do what is right according to his words. First, we have to reveal the goodness of God in our hearts before we can know what is right and what is wrong.
8 "Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. 9 Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. 10 Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers."
-Galatians 6: 8-10
So in these verses here it's showing that when we sow to please the Holy spirit we reap eternal life, but when we sow to please the sinful nature then we reap destruction. I know that doing the right thing and doing "good" is not always easy, especially with the way that the world is today. There are so many evil and corrupt things in this world that are being normalized. It's also normal for us to want to just go along with what everyone else is doing, but we know as Christians and disciples of Christ, that the things that are normalized in this world are not okay.
It can be a struggle to stand against the grain and that's why it's so important to know the goodness of God. Whenever you truly have the goodness of God revealed in your heart and you know that he is good, merciful, and gracious, it helps to know that nothing good that you do goes unnoticed from God. If we just hang in there and we do what's right, even if it's not what we want to do, we will reap a harvest from that. We have the greatest gift of all, which is eternal life through Jesus Christ, so we want to do good to all people and be loving, kind, and gracious. That's why I say it's so important to go back and listen to each of the episodes from the fruit of the Spirit or do it week by week as I do it, because all of these different things go hand in hand. Without love we can't have joy, peace, patience, kindness, and goodness; all of that stems from love and that's why that's the first thing that I did was love.
4 "So Moses chiseled out two stone tablets like the first ones and went up Mount Sinai early in the morning, as the Lord had commanded him; and he carried the two stone tablets in his hands. 5 Then the Lord came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name, the Lord. 6 And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 7 maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.” -Exodus 34: 4-7
These verses here show that the Lord is compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in love and faithfulness. He maintains that love to thousands and he forgives wickedness and sin, but he does not leave the guilty unpunished. So the people that have hate in their heart are not going to go on punished and they're going to die in there sins. So this just goes to show the goodness of God, because goodness is not only being good or being gracious, merciful ,and loving, but goodness also is righteous action and God is righteous. He seeks to who love us, he wants to love us so much and have compassion, mercy, and forgive us of our sins, but if we don't want to be forgiven, if we don't accept Jesus Christ and we don't repent for our sins, then the guilty ones won't go unpunished. That's why it's important for us as Christians to spread the gospel and to let other people know about God and how amazing he is and help them to see the truth of God's words. Some people may be spiritually blind and not know any better and they just don't know about God and then some people may know about God, but they just don't believe in Jesus Christ.
1 "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. 2 He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, 3 he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. 4 Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. 5 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil' my cup overflows. 6 Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever." -Psalm 23
These verses are so powerful, and this was a Psalm of David. David was a man after God's own heart. I started tearing up just reading these verses to you guys because they're so powerful if you truly believe them. In verse three it says, "He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake." So when we truly ask God to reveal his goodness in our hearts, and we know that God is good, righteous, merciful, loving, compassionate, and we seek to know the truth of God's word and we study the Bible, pray to God, and have that close relationship with him, he guides us in paths of righteousness. He guides us to goodness and to revealing his goodness in our hearts and just like it says here in verse six, "surely goodness and love will follow me all of the days of my life." When we truly follow God, we're disciples of Jesus Christ, and we seek to live the way that Christ wants us to live, goodness and love will follow us all the days of our lives and we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever because we will have eternal life through Christ. Whenever we ask God to reveal his goodness in our hearts, it'll open up our eyes, our mind, and our heart to so many amazing things that God has done in our life.
Now let's do some reflection about the goodness of God and revealing it in our hearts. I want you guys to write down a couple of things, so get out a piece of paper, pull up the notes on your phone, etc.
1. Write down how has God revealed his goodness in your life
-When you're thinking of how God has revealed his goodness in your life, you want to think of some times that went the way that they should, not necessarily the way that you thought they should go, or the way that you wanted them to go.
-What are some times in your life that now that you look back at it, you know that's exactly how it should have went and that God revealing his goodness in your life?
2. Write down some times when the Holy spirit guided you to do the right thing
-We're all human beings and we're all sinners, but whenever we're saved and we have the Holy spirit within us, we have the fruit of the spirit and the Holy spirit within us will counsel us to do the right thing or to know what is right and what is wrong.
-In those times that you really wanted to do something that you knew you shouldn't do and something held you back from that, that was the Holy spirit guiding you to do the right thing.
So I really want you guys to just reflect on those things and think about the goodness of God and the different things in your life that reveal his goodness that maybe you never noticed before. God is so good, merciful, gracious, loving, compassionate, righteous, and he has our best interests at heart. We just have to lean on him, ask him for guidance, trust in him completely, and he will lead us in the right paths. He will lead us in righteousness and guide us through every situation in our life. So I hope this episode helped you guys. Next week we're going to be going into faithfulness, so stay tuned for that.
I love you guys so much.
Never forget to choose faith over fear.
-Lorena Camille (Faith Fuels My Fire)
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