God is good – all the time

God’s been good to me this week. Ok, I know God is good every week, but this week, I actually noticed.

It was my turn to lead worship this week, with my trusty MP3 player. Up until now, it was a task I dreaded – the technology had me tearing my hair out, nothing was in the right key or tempo and frankly trying to find cheerful carols had me almost ready to jump ship.

However, a few things happened this week to encourage me…

Firstly, we decided to pick up a Bob Goff course in our life group – Love Does. Watching the study introduction, reading a bit about Bob’s work and the little internet trail it led to, had a good vibe. It helped me make a few decisions, turn the corner from a season of overload and shake off some dust (literally). And it’s not like I’d never heard of Bob before, but God decided it was time for me to pay attention to his message.

So with Bob’s optimistic vibe, I cracked on with planning the worship.

Then some timely resources came my way, with some positive reinforcement and encouragement attached – a heaven-sent combination. One of these was a website I had looked at before, but when I tried to create an account last time, it asked for a US land address and I gave up. This time, (God made me do it) I ignored that section and just pressed “submit” – geddit? – and it let me in! Ha! This turned out to be an amazing mine of information as well as offering free streamed music to help me decide what to use. A mini-epiphany of its own.

With approval from Natasha for the music, I decided not to fight the technology but take a couple of easier options, had a bit of a practice in my car (teen taxi) during the week and lo! the worship was sorted.

One of Bob Goff’s recommendations is to “quit something every Thursday”, which was the homework for this week. We wondered in our life group how much Bob must have had on his plate in the first place, to be able to continually quit something every Thursday. Then we thought – if he is anything like us, what he quits on Thursday he picks straight up again on Friday! Like us, he may have been working on the same things for a while. Maybe he is including “quitting” putting something off that we know we should get on with; or stopping worrying about the same thing over and over again. Maybe he is not talking about giving up chocolate, but giving up boasting or criticising others, or putting ourselves down; instead of leaving a job, giving up suffering in silence (or moaning loudly!) and asking for some help.

Over the last few sermons, God’ s signs seem to be pointing us to take stock and incubate ready for the next season; to spend time trying to hear and see what he is showing us and consider how to respond. I’m a bit worried that this will involve adding to my multiple “to do” lists but maybe I just need to add more to my new list entitled “to stop”. Then I’ll have a chance to notice that God is good – all the time.