Is God Really Good?

Have you ever experienced something so good that you couldn’t adequately describe it to someone else? Recently, Amy and I were in Hawaii for a work trip and to celebrate our 20th anniversary. One morning, we found a little breakfast spot where the line was already forming at 6:00 a.m. I ordered the special: coconut and banana French toast with powdered sugar and macadamia nut syrup.

It was one of the greatest meals I’ve ever had.

Afterward, we walked across the street, sat by the ocean, and quietly took it all in. The ocean was beautiful—but I was still thinking about that French toast.

Some things are difficult to explain. Eventually, you just have to tell someone, “You have to experience it for yourself.”

God is like that.

We should share our faith. We should tell people what God has done in our lives. But there comes a point where someone else’s description can only take us so far. Eventually, we have to take a step of faith and experience God for ourselves. David puts it this way in Psalm 34:8: “Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.” The word translated “good” carries the idea of something that is good in character and good in what it produces. We see this same idea throughout Genesis 1. God repeatedly looks at His creation and calls it good. Creation was pleasing, fitting, beneficial, and functioning according to God’s intention.

Then David uses that same word to describe God Himself. God doesn’t become good when He does something we like. God is good, and He does good because goodness is who He is. Circumstances may change. Our ability to recognize His goodness may change. But His character does not. That matters because David wrote Psalm 34 out of an incredibly difficult season.

David was running from King Saul and fled into enemy territory in Gath—the hometown of Goliath. When he was recognized, David found himself trapped between enemies. Saul wanted him dead, and now the people of Gath recognized the man who had killed their champion.

David was terrified. He eventually pretended to be insane so King Achish would dismiss him, and David escaped.

Psalm 34 looks back on that experience. David says, in essence: I was afraid. I cried out to God. He heard me. He rescued me. Then he says, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”

David’s circumstances weren’t good. God was.

That distinction changes the way we interpret our lives. God’s goodness isn’t determined by our circumstances. We don’t have to look at everything happening around us and decide whether God is good based on whether life is going according to plan.

My life is good because God is good.

But David takes us one step further. He says, “Blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.” Taking refuge is an action. It means entrusting yourself to God’s care. David isn’t inviting us to stand at a distance and intellectually agree that God is good. He invites us to run toward God and place our lives in His hands. That’s how we taste and see.

At some point, faith requires trust. We have to move beyond knowing things about God and actually entrust our lives to Him.

God’s goodness is the foundation beneath me, the lens before me, and the refuge around me.

So where do you need to trust Him today? Where have you been waiting for God to prove His goodness before you surrender something to Him?

Taste and see.

Run to Him. Entrust yourself to His care. Not only because God is good, but because goodness is who He is—and goodness is what He does.