I really love listening to music, and singing along if I can – even if the song is in a foreign language, and I think I’m singing what sounds like the right words! This happens quite a lot at the Zumba classes I go to, when a lot of the tracks are sung in Spanish or Portuguese. I go home and look up the lyrics so that I can sing the right words the next time, and often try to translate the words so that I know what I’m saying – you can never be too careful, especially with some of the songs we dance to!
It’s so easy sometimes to just let the lyrics of songs wash over us, almost meaningless to us – we hear the words, and that’s all they are – words. But occasionally a word or a phrase pops out at me and I am compelled to investigate.
This happened recently at our staff retreat. We were singing the well-known Christian chorus “Holy Spirit (you are welcome here)”. We got to the bridge section where the words are “Let us experience the glory of your goodness” and I suddenly thought to myself ‘what is the glory of God’s goodness?’ and ‘what does God’s goodness look like for me?’ and ‘how can I sing this, and not know what it means?’ So, I took a closer look. Here’s what I found:-
The Bible tells us that the word ‘good’ actually means holy, pure and righteousness. Literally goodness is godliness. So, God’s goodness represents everything that God IS, everything that God HAS, and everything that God DESIRES for us to experience.
Goodness in Hebrew is ‘good in the widest sense’ – so that means God’s goodness is designed to absolutely overwhelm us. I find this really comforting and encouraging. He wants the absolute best for me, at all times.
Probably one of the most famous psalms is “The Lord is my shepherd”, Psalm 23. In verse 6 it says “Surely GOODNESS and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever”. I hadn’t really understood this verse before, even though I must have read it and sung it many times. The word ‘follow’ here literally means to pursue. So the Goodness of God is constantly pursuing us [we sing another famous song about ‘Your goodness is running after, it’s running after me’]
Someone put it like this; “The goodness of God is the greatest good that we could ever think of, only greater!”
No matter how good we think God is, His goodness to us is greater still. The more we become aware of God’s goodness, the more it increases. Focusing on His goodness will amplify all He has done, all He is doing, and all He will do in our lives. How amazing is that realisation?
And not only that, but He wants to demonstrate His goodness through us, to everyone we meet.
1 Peter 2:9 says “You are a chosen people. You are a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the GOODNESS OF GOD, for He called you out of the darkness into His wonderful light.”
So, join me if you can, and learn to experience the glory of His goodness.
I can assure you, it’s so, so good