God Gives Good Gifts

 January 6, 2024

Saturday

James 1:17 (NASB 2020)17 Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.

When we pray, we think we are praying for good things. However, we have no means of evaluating whether something is truly good. Sometimes what we believe is good may be bad for us. God only gives us the good as He assesses it as good.

Paul would pray that his “thorn in the flesh” would be removed. That wouldn’t have been good for him because God told him that he was strong when he was weak. Depending on God is good and relying on yourself is not as good. Most of us would have prayed that our “thorn in the flesh” was removed too. Naturally, we won’t see how it could be good on our own. We would have been left with only our own strength if our prayers were answered the way we expressed them.

God doesn’t change concerning this. He gives us what we need. He gives us what is good. That is reassuring. We would not be able to have confidence in a God who changed how He felt about things. We wouldn’t know what to expect when we prayed. We might even have some trepidation in our prayers because we might think that we are telling God what to do. In other words, we might be afraid that He will give us exactly what we have asked for even if it isn’t good for us.

I know someone will tell me that God has allowed a prayer to be answered that wasn’t good for them. Again, I don’t think we have enough information to evaluate this. We often need to learn a lesson so that we won’t do something more harmful to ourselves. Praying that we receive an award may result in realizing that awards aren’t necessary when we know we have done our best. The wanting of things is sometimes more desirable than actually having those things.

Praying for a new car may result in buying one that has payments that last for years. The agony of those payments may cause you to never go into debt like that again.

So, know that what you receive from the Lord will be good. He never changes in this. You can count on receiving good from the Lord.