Doubting God’s Goodness (Part 1)
April 28, 2026
For decades, spring has been a blue time for me despite the warm sunshine and blooming flowers. It is the time of year my dear sister Ruth died – April 5, 1978. It took me 20 years to realize I was equating spring with that grief event.
Anyone who suffers a loss of someone dear to them might entertain the same questions I had about whether God is truly good. Is He really in control like people tell us? Why do we earnestly pray for healing? Do prayers really work at all? Why do we believe in a God Who seems ineffective, powerless, or capricious? Did He kill them because He needs them in heaven more than we need them on Earth? Worse of all, we’re told that God sometimes puts illness on people to teach them something? Not only might we doubt His goodness, but we might even think He is angry with us or maybe he is just sadistic!
A significant grief event in our lives is often a make-or-break moment in our faith in God. Does God care? Does He answer prayers? Why do bad things happen if the Bible tells us that He is a good God? I spent a lot of years getting answers to these questions. I do not say that I know everything there is to know, but I do know more than I did 40+ years ago when I walked away from the God I was brought up to believe. I have since found my way back, and I can assure you that the Father, Son (Jesus), and Holy Spirit are real and they are very, very good.
For anyone who has ever doubted the goodness of God, this series is for you. I will attempt to encapsulate the things I have learned about God’s goodness in my 25+ years of studying the Bible, listening to teachings, reading books on the subject, and examining my life experiences. I don’t have all the answers, but there is no doubt whatsoever in my mind of God’s goodness. I KNOW He is good.
If you read my books and blog, you will know that I believe the Holy Bible is God’s inspired Word and we can trust it as truth, even if we don’t understand everything we read in its pages. God reveals Himself in His Word. The more we read and meditate on the Word, the more we understand His ways. Let’s start with love. The apostle St. John wrote this about God in 1 John 4:16: And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him. Love is God’s chief characteristic and the reason for His goodness.
John 3:16-17
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. (NKJV)
Romans 8:31-32
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? (NKJV)
Ephesians 2:4-10
But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, lest anyone should boast. 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
We who are living in the New Testament (the New Covenant) age can be assured that what Jesus and his disciples preached about the Father is true. God is not the wrathful God that the authors of the Old Testament perceived and wrote about. They only hoped for a Savior who would restore them to a right relationship with God the Father. We now have the Savior Jesus, who HAS ratified the new covenant, restored us and made us the adopted children of God. God’s goodness and true love is best revealed in the finished work of Jesus and our belief in Him.
Prayer: Heavenly Father, Thank You for Your manifested love by sending your Son, my Savior, Jesus Christ. You are good to me because You love me. Period. As I pray and search, show me Your goodness in such a way that I know, that I know, that I know, that I know You are a good, good God. This request I make in the name of Jesus. Amen.