Unshackled Moments ~ January 5, 2018 ~ Goodness And Mercy

This morning I rose from bed, threw on some clothes, grabbed the coffee pot and headed for the study to see how much of my morning devotions I could get done before it warmed enough to go break the ice so that the horses, goats, chickens and dogs on our property and my parents' place would have water without my having to worry about it freezing back over. As I usually do, I put on Pandora, today I had my stations shuffling, and while I opened my email, one of the first songs to play happened to be a reggae song by Israel Houghton entitled Surely Goodness. It's an awesome song, if you like reggae. Even if you don't, the lyrics are great.

It's primarily based on the last verse of the 23rd Psalm, which begins by saying, Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. The song is about how the writer hadn't been able to believe at first that God wasn't mad at him and wouldn't leave him, but now he's confident in God's love and faithfulness and he sees goodness, mercy and grace all around him. I like that a lot. One of the things I've always liked about that psalm is the idea of goodness and mercy following me. When you follow someone, you react to them, to what they are doing and the direction they are going. And I love the assurance that wherever I may turn or whatever I may do, good or bad, right or wrong, Daddy reacts out of love with goodness and mercy. It doesn't mean that there are no consequences, but it does mean that He's not a mean old man in the sky waiting for me to step out of line so that He can punish me.

But this morning something occurred to me about this idea of goodness and mercy following me. This is not what the verse is saying or means, but I believe it to be a truth that can be extrapolated from the true meaning and intent of the scripture. Before, my life was marked by negative consequences to my selfishness, my choices and my addictions. What I left in my wake, you could say what followed me, was damage, destruction, hurt feelings, wronged bystanders and the like. It would make sense if people said, here comes trouble, when they saw me heading their way, because of what I left behind as the consequence of how I was living.

I don't ever want that to be the case again. One of the blessings of being set free from the bondage of my addictions for over seven and a half years is that people are often actually happy to see me. People trust me again. I am not constantly having to try to remember who I need to avoid because they have reason to be angry with me. But I would love to move beyond that on a more constant basis. Once we understand that awesome truth that Daddy loves us as we are, not as we should be, and that His reaction to us is always loving goodness and mercy, then we can begin walking in that same love as we grow closer to Him and become more like Him. How great would it be if the people we encounter all came away from the meeting with the feeling that they had just been washed over with goodness and mercy? If love, kindness, compassion, goodness and mercy became our constant wake behind us, what a blessing we would be to those whose lives we touch.

No longer bringing pain and destruction into the lives of others is amazing, and it is a great place to start. But to be of maximum service to God and others, for our every day life to be a demonstration of His love, power and way of life, we need to go beyond that. If we are truly surrendered to the Spirit, than the fruits of the Spirit are what people will feel and see as the consequences of our life. It's so much more than simply the absence of the negative. It is being ruled by love and living love in such a way that the positive wonder of God's goodness and mercy is what follows us, what we leave in our wake as we pass through the lives of others. My prayer is that you and I would be so overcome with Daddy's love for us and so in tune with the Spirit that when people think of or describe what it's like to be around us, it would boil down to goodness and mercy follow them.

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