Good, good, good...The Fruit of the Spirit Part 6, cont.

To review: Our children taught us a couple of weeks ago that goodness can be not so much in the behavior of the object as in the value placed by the observer. For reference consider Genesis 1:31 (NIV) "God saw all that He had made, and it was very good..." God's initial estimation of His creation was that it was very good. I don't know about the rest of you, but as a mom sometimes I struggle with my self-image in terms of whether or not I am good enough, mostly because in my heart of hearts I don't want to be "just" good enough...I want to exceed expectations: my own (which are high), other people's (often unknown), and to be honest maybe even God's.



The futility of that last point is obvious. Throughout the Bible we are told that God has an accurate view of who we are. Just two examples that come quickly to mind:

• Psalm 103:14 (NIV) - "...for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust."


• Isaiah 64:6 (NIV) - "...all our righteous acts are like filthy rags..."

I cannot win God's favor by any act of my own. Even my good stuff is like a well-used dust mop in His view, and because of my human frailty I will not always be able to do the good stuff. However, He still views me a a precious daughter not because of what I have done, but because He has made me good through the work of Jesus on the cross, and through the continuing work of His Holy Spirit in my life.



In John 16 Jesus tells His disciples that it is for their good that He is going away so that the Counselor (the Holy Spirit) will come (verse 7). He goes on to explain that the Holy Spirit will teach us the standards of sin and righteousness, by telling us what God wants us to hear.



I am convinced that I cannot meet any measure of goodness on my own. I must learn to rely more on God's Spirit to show me the way to go, and rest in His assurance that He sees me as very good.

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This post is part of the Moms' 30-minute Blog Challenge at Steady Mom. It is also the latest installment in a series on the Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23, see left) learned from our children and from the Bible. You can see previous posts in the series by going to my "blog schedule" page and looking through the Tuesday and Thursday posts.