All the Good in the World

In 1979 the Gatlin Brothers had a hit song with the line, “all the gold in California is in a bank in the middle of Beverly Hills in somebody else’s name.’ Their harmony in the refrain of that song is remarkable. I bet if you know the song, it’ll be in your head all day now. Every now and then, that song will pop up in the playback list of my mind and I smile. 

I smile because I have re-written that song. In my mind, I hear, “All the good in all the world is from our Father.” James, of course, said it better: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights” (James 1:17). And we get to be a part of that good. It shouldn’t be shocking that we get to preach the “Good News.” Or that the Spirit instructs us “…whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things” (Philippians 4:8).

There is plenty of bad you can focus on in our current culture and evil people aren’t going to get better (2 Timothy 3:13). It is easy to allow our hearts, our spirits, and our minds to be drug down into that negative and for even our telling of the Good News to sound like bad news. When that happens, our preaching becomes drudgery and our work becomes more taxing than rewarding. We find ourselves shuffling through and feeling weighed down, and eventually, we just want to quit. Rediscover the God of every good gift and of all Good News, and build on Him! Don’t quit.