goodness of god

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The Ingredient for Holiness

April 28, 2025April 23, 2025 krisshetter

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, or I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30

Welcome back to our second look at the recipe for holiness in our sanctification journey! If you missed last week’s post and my quest for the perfect Southern buttermilk biscuit, click here!

In today’s scripture, Jesus reaches out His hand and yearns for you throughout the Gospels. It’s like you’re His perfect buttermilk biscuit! However, so many read the first line of this scripture and forget the rest. How does that turn out in following a recipe?

Jesus goes on to say, “take my yoke.” That means to put it on and bear it. You see, we all are yoked right now to something. We are obedient and submissive to many worldly things. The rules of the road, rules of propriety, relationship rules, government rules, corporate rules, and the modern virtual signaling rules. We commit ourselves in obedience each day to them, seeking to be accepted, seen, and loved. Yet when Jesus commands us to be obedient and submissive to Him, so many decide His rules leave a bad taste in their mouths.

Unbelievers so often think of Christianity as a set of rules you have to follow. Plus, plus a bunch of fun-filled ingredients of life you have to give up. All the while, they search in futility for fulfillment of those nine life goals we talked about last week by being obedient to the culture and fleshly desires.

Come and Belong

Jesus says, come, all you who are weary. Weary of trying recipe after recipe to find a sense of belonging and being seen and understood. Weary of the world’s weight on your shoulders, never feeling like you’re winning at life.

Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self?” Luke 9:23-25

Friends, I know Christians who yearn for good relationships yet harbor unending unforgiveness. Others turn their backs on God’s demand for submissiveness as they write up their own life plan to which God must submit. There are plenty of Christians who seek treasure over Christ. Man’s approval rather than God’s eternal love. There are so many miserable Christians wearing God’s head chef hat.

Come and Enjoy

We can enjoy all the goodness God offers today. The ingredients for the life we all so desperately desire can be found in His Word. Throw off sexual immorality, despise greed and selfishness, forgive even your enemies, and be loving and a peacemaker to all. If we know His Word and we have seen Him at work at our most desperate hours, how can we continue to just dip our finger in the cake batter and call us “done?” I want to be the finished product that God desires for me, don’t you?

If Jesus, on the eve of His death, could pray, “Your will, not mine” to the Father, then shouldn’t we?

Christian friend, are you just a churchgoer, someone knowledgeable about God? Have you gone through trials and learned God loves you? And yet when you hear His voice speaking to you through His Word, you either pretend it doesn’t apply to you or you flat out ignore what He asks of you.

He says “forgive” and you won’t. He says “give” and you don’t. He commands you to love and you say you can’t. You are missing out on God’s gloriously good gifts. True fulfillment means casting off being worried about what the world (and your family and friends) thinks of you. We put on Jesus’ yoke of obedience and submission.

Come to Eternal Happiness

I may not yet know how to make the perfect buttermilk biscuit. But I do know the recipe for eternal happiness. It’s written out in 66 God-breathed books. Ask yourself today what you are refusing to do for God? He has a great recipe for your life. But He needs you to put on your apprentice apron and get to the work He has laid out for you.

Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in Him. Psalm 34:8

This week’s question: What is the one thing you continually refuse to be obedient or submissive to God about?

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Day 17 Goodness of God

July 17, 2024July 9, 2024 krisshetter

And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High;
    for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him,  Luke 1:76

The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him,  Lamentations 3:25

In one of my Bible study groups I asked what in our lives do we struggle to completely turn over to God. Being all women, it wasn’t surprising that most answered our children. We worry, we fear, we hover, we protect. We lay away at night thinking of their future. We pray continuously for those who aren’t yet saved.

For so many of us, however, that role becomes overwhelming and overbearing. It puts our relationships with our children and maybe even our spouses in peril. The solution? To see God as not only our father but the good father who loves our children even more than we do, which seems impossible. When I finally turned my adult children over to God, I first had to trust Him and know Him. I had to realize how good He is and how much He loves me too.

Now imagine the parents of John the Baptist. His father, Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied the enormous responsibility his just born son would be required to put on his shoulders. Both his mother and father seemed to understand the weight of the role in announcing the coming Messiah. A role I don’t think most parents would want for their children. A nice quiet life as a fisherman with a wife who bears him many children – yes, that’s what Elizabeth probably wanted for John.

But no. John became a bit odd. He wore strange clothes and ate bugs. He spoke to anyone who would listen about the Messiah. His message was sometimes confusing and almost heretical. Yet we don’t see in scripture his parents lamenting. They probably did. But I would surmise based on the prophecy and Elizabeth’s faithfulness that they lamented to God.

They lifted their son up to the God Most High for protection and direction. They trusted in His goodness. I’m sure if they were still alive when John sat in his final jail cell they wept. But they also knew their son had been faithful to God and the Messiah had been faithful to him. And as a parent, what more, truly should we ask.

Click here to listen to today’s song: Goodness of God

Day 11 The Goodness

July 11, 2024July 8, 2024 krisshetter

I am the bread of life.  John 6:48

Whoever fears the Lord has a secure fortress, and for their children it will be a refuge. The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, turning a person from the snares of death.  Proverbs 14:26-27

I was talking with a young woman recently who was raised in the Christian faith and at 18 went off to Bible college for a few semesters. At 19, she dropped out, got married, and was soon pregnant. At 21, her husband abandoned their family. Soon after, she abandoned Jesus.

You see when calamity hit, her faith was revealed to be built on the sand Jesus warns us about in Matthew 7:24-27. Her house fell after the windy, stormy beating. How could that be? She was surrounded by the faithful for all her life up until then. Isn’t that enough?

Let’s look at our faith this way. If I hung around a bunch of people who loved baking and I enjoyed eating what they made, it wouldn’t make me a baker. It’d make me fat, however! I would have knowledge of baking, the process, the ingredients, the do’s and don’ts. Without the love of baking and actually getting my hands covered in flour I’d just be an observer.

It’s not the doing that makes us Christians it’s the surrendered belief that Jesus loves us so much He died for our sins, was buried, and rose again in the witnessed resurrection. He becomes our secure fortress, our daily provision, and fountain of life. He holds us tight through every tragedy and every windfall in our life. We soon find Him at work everywhere. He keeps showing up.

When Toby Mac wrote this song it was after the death of his adult son from an overdose. Of course, it was tragic. Of course, he was full of tears and heartache. But he had built his house on solid ground. He sought refuge in the Lord. The wind blew and the storm enveloped him. Eventually, the sun came out and he was able to walk out his door into the warm sunlight of God’s love.

As for that young woman? She is now happily married and I’m so glad to say she wants to know about Jesus and this Bread of Life. She wants to learn how to build her life so she too can withstand what this world throws at us. My prayer is that she will begin to see Jesus at work everywhere.

Click here to listen: The Goodness

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The Result of Goodness

June 2, 2023June 2, 2023 krisshetter

A few years ago, tragedy struck popular Christian singer Toby Mac’s life. When his 21 year old son died of a drug overdose he found himself in deep despair. And wouldn’t we all? The next few songs he wrote reflected that state of incredible sadness. One day, he asked God if this was where he would sit the remainder of his life. God, in his infinite goodness, began a new work in the singer. Through the Holy Spirit, the beauty and glory of God were revealed to him in what Mr. Mac calls, “glimpses.”

I wrote on a napkin one day, ‘you’re still the goodness in my life,’ and I started to believe that, and to see how God is good to me. That’s when I wrote “The Goodness,” and it felt like a celebration, because I began to think about how gracious God is, and how He gives us little glimpses of His goodness, even in the valley.
Toby Mac, on You’re the Goodness in My Life

The result of understanding and experiencing God’s goodness was an action by the singer. An act I would call of kindness. He wrote the world a song to help so many others see those glimpses during their difficult trials.

Too often we take the gifts of God and create a narrow narrative on what they should look like. Hospitality “should” be a beautiful home, sumptuous meal and perfectly made up host. Joy means always being “happy.” Love means not only accepting everyone’s choices but willingly going along with them. You see what I mean? We all know, in our hearts and minds those are false narratives. And yet we still succumb to them. Kindness falls into the same trap.

When the Holy Spirit does his work in us He does it in concert with our gifts and talents, I believe. For Toby Mac, an accomplished musician, that meant creating something beautiful musically for all the world to enjoy. He didn’t have to write that song and record it. He could’ve kept it to himself. But I’m sure the Holy Spirit whispered to him, “This is what I want you to do.”

While I have written before the importance of prayer when it comes to so many decisions in our life, when we seek to merge our life to reflect God, we will know what kindness done with our talents can look like on a daily basis. We don’t have to ask, we will know. We may need that whisper or nudge but if I were sitting having lunch with you right now and asked how you could be kind to your neighbors you would have a few ideas that would differ from mine. And all of them God would say, “It is good.”

The Lord appeared to us in the past, saying: “I have loved you with an everlasting love;
    I have drawn you with unfailing kindness. Jeremiah 31:3

Our daily walk in soaking in God’s unfailing goodness and the Holy Spirit’s transforming power of helping us shine that goodness will lead us to the fruit of kindness. Fruit that is so juicy and good. We won’t feel as though we “have to” help that neighbor or stranger. We will feel impelled to. Just like God doesn’t feel He has to be nice to us – He loves us so much it’s just His essence!

Kindness to me may look like asking my neighbors to overwhelm our new neighbor with a newborn with boxes of diapers. To you, it might be a hot lasagna tray or trimming their bushes. Kindness to a homeless person can be just a moment of talking to them or an invite for a meal or shower.

I once called the police to come and check on a homeless person laying across the sidewalk and onto the street. I feared the was dead. Many, many people had walked and driven by the man. When the police came, they took him (alive) to a shelter. Yes, that was kindness too. Not leaving someone in a distressed or dangerous state. Isn’t that the type of kindness God does for us most often? At least that’s what the Holy Spirit did for Toby Mac. Through His love, goodness and kindness He lifted him out of despair and put him back on his fruit-filled journey.

Friend, if you aren’t sure or feel uncomfortable about selfless acts of kindness look to our Father. He doesn’t hesitate with us. He gives generously and freely. And if we want to be imitators of “good,” bountiful fruit bearers, He shows us the way each and every day in our own lives.

You may find it almost impossible to keep your minds always tending upwards, but at any rate, while you are here, “look up” with eyes uplifted to the hills where comes your help. Happy will it be for you, if by the good Spirit of God you can but get the eye so fixed upon the goodness of God now, that you shall become so fascinated, that your attention cannot be taken off that glorious object; it will be a blessing to you, a great blessing which will bear you through all your trials, and make you suck honey from the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock.
Charles Spurgeon

Next week: Faithfulness