A Prayer About God’s Goodness
They will be my people, and I will be their God. I will give them singleness of heart and action, so that they will always fear me for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me. I will rejoice in doing them good and will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and soul. Jeremiah 32:38-41
Oh my goodness! Make that “Oh” your goodness, Heavenly Father, for this portion of your Word exposes the depths of my unbelief, it sabotages my small notions about you, and invites me to see that the gospel is so much bigger and better than I could ever imagine.
What strikes my heart as I ponder the extraordinary array of promises in this passage is all of the “I will’s“. I get much more encouragement from “I will’s” than “I might’s”, especially when you are doing the talking. I praise you for your inviolate commitment to be such an outrageously, immeasurably, unimaginably good God to your people.
I praise you, along with my brothers and sisters in Christ, for promising to never stop doing good to us and for telling us you actually rejoice in doing us good! This is truly overwhelming and overflowing with enormous implications! I dare believe such an astonishing revelation about you because, Father, you did “make good” on your promise to make an everlasting covenant with us.
Lord Jesus, well beyond Jeremiah’s day, you did come and you accomplished everything necessary for the fulfilling of such mercy-full and grace-full promises. It is your life, death, and resurrection for us that guarantees us God is this good, all the time… all the time, God is this good to us!
Because of you, Lord Jesus, we are already perfectly forgiven and have already been declared to be legally righteous in God’s sight. And, because of you, Lord Jesus, one day our whole being will be perfected, when you return to finish making all things new. On that Day our Father will plant us in the land of the new heaven and new earth with all his heart and soul! We believe, help us in our unbelief, dear Lord!
Until that Day, Holy Spirit, continue your transforming and liberating work in our lives, that we might love and serve our God with singleness of heart, affectionate reverence and gospel-driven obedience.
Hallelujah, what a salvation! Hallelujah, what a Savior. Very Amen!