(Remnant Meeting 2013) the Goodness of God and Testimonies — Brian Long

The Goodness of God Revealed in His Glory

Praise God, it's so wonderful to see everybody here tonight. I want to share a scripture with you that's already been shared tonight. Exodus chapter 33. Something happens, brothers and sisters, when you encounter the presence of the Lord.

The more that God manifests His presence to us, the more we want to know Him. There's a dissatisfied kind of satisfaction. It's true that nobody but Jesus satisfies. He's the living water. But once you've tasted and seen that He's good, you hunger and thirst for more.

And more and more and more and more of God. Well, Moses was a man who spoke to God face to face, even as a man speaks to his friend. And he was a man who hungered and valued the presence of the Lord. And here's a passage of scripture where Moses, after just having spoke with God face to face as a man speaks to his friend, after having just cried out for God's presence to go with him and after God assuring Moses and giving him his promise that, yes, my presence will go with you.

Moses is still not satisfied. He wants more of God. And here is his request. One more request. After God assuring him, my presence will go with you. Moses goes deeper. He hungers for more. And this is what he says in Exodus 33, verse 18.

He said that, as Moses said, please show me your glory. And I love the old King James here because he says, I beseech thee. I beseech thee, show me thy glory. I beseech thee means, God, I beg you. I'm pleading with you.

I beg you show me your glory. There was nothing more important to Moses than the presence of the Lord. There was nothing more important to Moses than the glory of God. He wanted to see the glory of God.

Well, God was going to answer his request. But when he did, what would he show Moses? Would he show him his justice? God is a just God. Would he show him a revelation of his holiness and righteousness?

God is holy and righteous. Would he reveal to Moses his power by just shaking the mountain and breaking the rocks apart? He's a God of all power. He's omnipotent. Would he show to Moses his his wrath?

He's a God of wrath. What would be the number one attribute that God would reveal to Moses in answering his request to see God's glory? Watch this carefully. I beseech thee, Lord, show me your glory. And verse 19, God says, I will make all my goodness pass over you.

I will make all my goodness pass before you and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.

But he said, you cannot see my face for no man shall see me and live. And the Lord said, here is a place by me and you shall stand on the rock. So it shall be while my glory passes by that I will put you in the cleft of the rock and will cover you with my hand while I pass by.

Then I will take away my hand and you shall see my back. But my face shall not be seen. There is only so much of God that we can handle right now. If God were to show us his glory, his splendor, his majesty and all of his glory, in other words, if he were to completely pull back the veil, none of us would be left standing because he is far more awesome and far more glorious and far more holy than any of us can even perceive him to be.

But God wants to grant Moses his request. Show me your glory. And God says, I'll show you this. I'll cause all my goodness to pass over you. We learn from that that the glory of God is seen in his goodness.

The glory of God is seen in his goodness. Do you remember what happened when King Solomon dedicated the temple to God? And the moment he finished praying, the glory of God filled the house and all the priests fell on their faces on the pavement to worship God.

Do you remember what they cried out? For he is good and his mercy endures forever. The attribute of God that penetrated their hearts at this revelation of his glory was his goodness. Brothers and sisters, our God is a good God.

He is good. He is good. He is the one who defines what is good. Everything he does is good. All that he is is good. Everything that God does is good. It is always right. It is always wise. It is always good.

God is good and his goodness is always passing by. Well, let's go on to read before I go further to see what happened. And if you skip down to chapter thirty four and verse five, it says now this was the next morning early in the morning.

And it says in verse five, now the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed by before him and proclaimed the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long suffering and abounding in what?

Goodness, abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation.

So Moses made haste and bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped. You want to see my glory, Moses? You will see my glory when you see my goodness. You will see my glory when you see that I'm good.

God's goodness passed by and in essence, his glory passed by Moses. God is good, brothers and sisters, that is his very nature, just as just as the sun shines and the sky is blue and ice is cold and fire burns.

God is holy that God is good. That is his nature. He cannot be other than good. He is good and he's good all the time and his goodness is passing by all the time. The question is whether we have eyes to see it, whether we have eyes to behold the goodness of God.

There's a verse in Romans chapter 11 that says, behold the goodness, behold, therefore, the goodness and severity of God. God wants us to behold his goodness. His goodness is seen. Tonight, his goodness is seen in I see the goodness of God, when I look into your faces, I see the goodness of God, when I see marriages right here this this evening that have been restored by the power of God.

I see the goodness of God when I see people here who have passed from death to life, that Jesus Christ is saved is the goodness of God that he kept your heart beating last night. It is the goodness of God that you're breathing right now, that you're alive.

God holds your very breath in his hand. He is a good God who does that. His goodness is seen in you. His goodness is seen in good brothers and sisters in the fellowship that he gives us. It's seen over all creation.

God's goodness is seen in all of his creation, all that he's made. He created the heavens and the earth and all that is in them. And I see his goodness everywhere. I see the goodness of God when I look up at the stars at night and you see this vast, awesome creation that God had created.

Why? He didn't have to do all of that. He created it for his glory. He created it for us to enjoy, to look upon, to to know my God created that. He is a good God. I see his goodness when I see the the majesty of the mountains, the colors in a rainbow, when I smell a fresh, the fresh fragrance after a rain.

When I see the beautiful colors of a wildflower, I see the goodness of God and I see his goodness not only in his creation, but in the way that he cares for his creation. Our father, he feeds the cattle on a thousand hills.

He feeds the little sparrow in my backyard. He knows when one of those sparrows falls to the ground and dies. He takes note of that. But even more than that, he knows the very number of hairs upon your head.

And he takes note when one single hair falls to the ground. He is a good God. He is a good God. He is good in that he he takes care. He is close to the broken hearted. The scripture says he saves those who are crushed in spirit.

He is a good God who gives this miracle of a brand new baby. Some of you have had the experience. God is good. He's given me children. He's given me a good wife. He holds the hand of a lonely widow. He is a good God.

He is a good God. He will never leave me. He will never forsake me. That is his promise. He will never let the he will never let the righteous be forsaken, nor their seed begged for bread. He is a good God.

He is good. But you know where his goodness is most clearly seen? In the face of Jesus Christ. Second Corinthians chapter four says in verse six, for it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who is shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

The glory of God is most clearly seen in the face of Jesus Christ. And if the glory of God is his goodness, then where is the goodness of God? Most clearly seen in the face of Jesus Christ. Behold the goodness of God tonight by beholding the Lord Jesus Christ, who always went about doing good and who is still going about doing good.

Behold the goodness of Jesus Christ, who came to seek and to save that which was lost. He is called the good shepherd, the good shepherd who would leave that ninety nine and go after that one lost sheep.

That was me. That was you. He's a good shepherd. He came to set the captives free. He is a good savior. He is a good savior who delivers the rundown drunk, delivers the drug addict who takes the prostitute off the street and cleans her up and saves her and washes her wider than snow.

He is a good God. He goes about doing good. He's a good savior. He's a good savior. He's a good God who delivered the demon possessed, constantly going about doing good. A good savior who forgave an adulterous woman when every religious, self-righteous man wanted to kill her.

He is good. He is good. And he's most his goodness is most clearly seen at Calvary. Some people say, well, why do bad things happen to good people that only happened one time ever? And that was at the cross of Calvary.

There is none good but God. There is one good, Jesus Christ, and at the cross of Jesus Christ, you behold both the goodness and the severity of God, the goodness and the severity of God meet at Calvary.

It's the severity of God that the son of God was crushed for our iniquities, that he was crucified for your sins and mine. It is the goodness of God that he gave his only son for sinners like you and me, that he paid the price for my sins on the cross.

That is the goodness of God, justice and mercy kissed at the cross. And I see the goodness of God at Calvary. I see the goodness of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And I see the goodness of God in our redemption and the way Jesus Christ has redeemed us.

It is not the leading of the Lord to me personally tonight to continue to preach. This is what he's led me to do. Proclaim to you that he is good and not continue to preach about it. I want you to see it as brothers and sisters will come up here and give testimony to the goodness of God and how they've experienced the goodness of God personally.

The goodness of God is passing by all the time. The goodness of God is going to pass by you tonight if you have eyes to see it. They will stand up here and they will proclaim to you not some cheap little cliche.

God is good. That's not a cliche. Some people may use that as a cliche. God is good all the time. Do you do you know it? Do you believe it? Do you know that to be true, that he's good all the time? It doesn't mean he's just good when the sun is shining.

It means that he's good when the sun is shining and also when it's raining. It means that he's good when you're up on the mountain and he's good when you're down in the valley. And I'm convinced there is certain revelations of the goodness of God that you and I can't see any other way except through tears.

And except through trials. When do you notice that bright, warm, beautiful sun the most? After it's been shining all day and at midday, you don't notice it so much then. You notice it when it comes up in the morning after you spend a whole night in the dark.

You notice it. You notice the warmth of that sun, not when it's a hot like it is this time of year, but after you've come through a long, cold winter, then that sun is precious to you. And your eyes are open to see it.

When do you notice that cold, fresh water that so refreshes you? It's not when you're living at the spring. It's when you've been in the desert for a while and you're thirsty and you're hungry and you're desperate.

Then that is precious to you. The goodness of God is all around you, brothers and sisters. He's a good God. And you will see it tonight. You will see it tonight, the people who will profess and proclaim that he's good when life is pleasant and he's good in times of pain.

He's good when you're up on the mountain and he's good when you're being tried and you're going through the trial of your life. And I pray that God would give us the faith to believe that we will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

That's what David said. He said, I would have lost heart. I would have fainted. I would have lost heart unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. I pray tonight our eyes would be open to how good our God is and it will demand two responses when you behold the goodness of God.

It demands a response. If you really see the goodness of God, you cannot help but worship him and cry out with all those in Scripture. He is good and his mercy endures forever is another thing. The goodness of God does.

It leads us to repentance. It leads us to repentance. It draws us to the cross. It draws us to Christ. How can I continue in sin against a God who is so good to me? He's so good. Jared and Anna, would you come first and share your testimony?

Testimonies of God’s Goodness in Marriage and Deliverance

This is a precious couple that God has brought down here. It's clearly the Lord has led them to Barnsdall. They've been here, I think, for about six weeks, but I feel like I've known them all my life and they've been a tremendous blessing to this fellowship.

And I've asked them first to share a testimony as to how they personally experienced the goodness of God.

God bless you both. Anna's going to share first and then I will. We just like to pray before we start. Father God, we just come to you this evening and we praise your holy name. You are a good God and I believe we can leave right now, Father, and be blessed by what has been shared through the praise and worship and what Brother Brian said.

But, Father, you are leading some of us to share testimonies and we just pray, God, that what would be said would not reflect us, Father, but you and what you have done. So we just commit this into your hands, Father, for you bless my wife as she shares on her spirit.

And I pray, God, that our testimonies, Father, would truly show your goodness. I pray this in Jesus' name.

When Jared told me that we were to share on the goodness of God, I started grinning because this attribute of God, perhaps more than most of them, has been the source of my foolish contentions with God.

And through it, he has been able to teach me the most. I specifically remember in Colorado when we were trying to sell our house, telling God that there is no way he can teach me of his goodness if he does not sell our house.

It's just not possible. It would be the good thing to do if he did sell it. But he did teach me in a very short time in the midst of my despair and burdened with our debt. He taught me how good he is.

And our house didn't sell for three years. But, and that was the first time that I realized that God can teach me something without answering my prayer. When he did allow our house to sell, wow, it was amazing.

He did more than I could think or ask. God was good when he allowed me to be born into a family with a dad and a mom who love each other. And just here lately, I've been realizing what a gift that was.

And I don't think I'll take it for granted again. He was good when he gave me intelligence, note, I did not say common sense, and the ability to learn and do well in school. I know this is a huge gift because I had five siblings who all struggled.

My father proved his goodness when he reached down at the age of 16 and pulled me out of the web of drunkenness, immorality, and a list so long I probably couldn't remember them all if I tried. When I say that he reached down, I mean when I turned my back on sin, it was totally through his voice talking with me and my spirit.

God was good to me when, because of giving my life to Jesus and wanting to leave the Amish religion I was brought up in, every Amish, and some who weren't, friend, family member, and neighbor turned away from me and treated me as an outcast.

They thought I was lost. My dad didn't want me around unless I would contaminate my siblings. I went to live with a widow woman and her young son. Through all this, I kept thinking, it's so weird. I hardly had any emotional pain.

Looking back, I realized it is indeed true. Surely he has borne our grief and carried our sorrows, from Isaiah 53, 4. Physically, I suffered from all the stress, but emotionally, he set me free. It was the oddest thing.

I've never experienced it since. God has been good to me many times in my last nine years of marriage, though it was rocky, to say the least, as many people have stated before me, during the darkest times, his light and his love ministered to me the brightest.

But most of all, God revealed to me his great goodness by giving me, as Brian said in the sermon, the gift of the thorn in the package of PCOS, the cause of our infertility. Jesus has held and comforted me through the pain, emotional and physical, the tears and the longing.

It seems to me that he chooses to break us with the things that we have the tightest grip on, the thing we want the most control over. Since I was probably 12 or younger, I longed to be a model. I lived for it, I planned for it, thought about it all the time.

I was going to be one and do it well. Parenting and how to be a good wife books intrigued me. It took about seven years, but he finally brought me to the place where I could say, I would rather be holy and totally surrender to you, God, than have a baby of my own.

Looking back, I could even see his good wisdom in not bringing children into the home that we were struggling with. Our marriage would be a whole other essay on his goodness, but I'll say, wow. He is good.

He has definitely made beauty from our ashes. Praise him for his beautiful love he has poured on us. As I told Lori, since he did our miracle, good will flows out of us for each other, and we can't help but be nice most of the time.

It's not us. We can feel that it's not us. It's easy to be nice. God was so good to me when Jesus said those three words that gave me this chance that I'm living now. It is finished. Psalm 13, five and six, I have trusted in thy good mercy.

My heart shall rejoice in thy salvation. I will sing unto the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me. If you guys could help me sing a little song. It's a really simple song. I don't know if you all know it or not, but you'll catch on pretty quick.

God is so good. God is so good. God is so good. He's so good to love him so, love him so, love him so. He's so good to answer his prayer. He's so good to sing soon. He's coming soon. He's so good. Follow up that, but typically I will jot a few notes down and then fly with the rest of it.

Just a couple hours ago, literally, I sat down at the computer and the Lord just started, I think it's the fastest I've ever typed and I can't type well. It's like the seeking you shall find method, but the Lord just really gave me some stuff here.

I'm going to read most of it, which is very unlike me, but I believe that's what he wants. I've just titled this, My Testimony to the Goodness of God. I will say, the first part of this almost sounds like blasphemy.

I don't mean it like that. It's just where I was. I hope you understand. When I was 13 years old, I accepted Christ. I put that in quotations. Think of that scripture that go out across land and sea trying to make disciples just like you.

You make nothing more than a two-fold son of hell. That's what I became. Shortly after that, I turned into a rebellious, hateful, mean, disrespectful sinner that hated God with all my being. I didn't think God was good at all.

I have done the most terrible, wicked things that anyone could imagine. I could shock you tonight with details, but I won't. Let's just say that I sinned with all my might. So is God good? At age 18, I got into porn, pornography.

How could God be good and let me live in that? When I was 19, I met Anna, and I had to wait for her to grow up before I could marry her. I was 24, and she was 17 when we got married. At that time, I thought God was really good.

A few weeks later, I wondered what I had done to deserve a marriage like this. God wasn't good anymore. So it went on and on like this, and I lived in pornography for the next 14 years. We went to church all this time, but I hated it.

I hated Christians. I hated family. I hated almost everything except porn. For those of you who don't know, we grew up in northern Indiana, so that's where we were living at this time. In 2006, we moved to Colorado.

I thought that maybe we could escape all our problems out there. Not. The problems just increased out there. I found a taxidermy school that I went to, and I found what I loved to do the most. Taxidermy.

I lived taxidermy. I breathed taxidermy. I talked taxidermy. I wanted nothing more than to be the best in the world at it. Also at this time, my wife got sick. She couldn't work more than a couple hours at a time at the most.

So what did she do? She read her Bible. Then she read her Bible. Then she read her Bible. Then she watched a cooking channel. Then she read her Bible. What happened? She got scripture in her heart and in her mind, and she got closer to God.

I got madder and madder and madder. You see, we had to go into debt for this taxidermy passion of mine, and I needed her to work, and she couldn't work, but she did read her Bible. And then she would share with me what she had learned, but who cares?

I have work to do. And so it went on for the next four years. In 2010, we moved back to Michigan to be close to my parents. My dad had gotten cancer, and we didn't know how long he had to live. We went back to the church we used to attend before, but I hadn't changed at all.

I started listening to Paul Washer, and something seemed to connect. This man spoke truth. I knew that. Let's back up a little bit. At about 12 years old, I felt a calling from God to preach, and I always had a passion for truth.

So when I heard Paul Washer preach, it was like, I want to be like him. I quoted him. I listened to him a lot. I have probably listened to 10 indictments against the modern church close to 20 times, and I can almost quote that whole sermon to you, but I still hated God.

God wasn't good. God was awful. God was mean. God let my dad die without me hearing him tell me he loved me. God made my wife sick, oh yeah, and God let me stay addicted to porn. On the night of July 29, 2012, I went into my office, and I decided that I would not come out until God came to meet me, and I didn't care how long it took.

I was prepared to go all night and all the next day if necessary. It took less than one hour, and the presence of God came into that little room and delivered me from the chains of darkness and gave me new life.

Is God good? My God is good. Romans 2 verse 4 says, Or despises thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? What had happened?

I had quit running from God. My hatred toward God was gone. I went into the bedroom, and I told Anna, and she was like, oh, okay. I had told her often that I had changed, and I never had. This was one time my wife was wrong.

God had truly changed me. My God is so good. The goodness of God let me see how wicked I really was. The goodness of God let me see Jesus, not only hanging on a tree for my sins, but he let me see that he became sin for me.

And the Father God crushed his son under the full force of wrath for me. Looking back, I can truly see the goodness of God in my life. The goodness of God kept me from slicing my throat with a knife as I sat looking at myself in my bedroom mirror when I was 15 years old.

The goodness of God kept me from blowing my brains out at the edge of a mineshaft in Colorado with my rifle. The goodness of God helped me write a suicide note to my wife, which then scared me so bad I couldn't pull the trigger once again.

The goodness of God let me marry Anna, and the goodness of God restored our marriage. The goodness of God made Anna my best friend in the world. The goodness of God let her forgive me for all that I've done against her.

The goodness of God gave my precious wife PCOS to teach me serious lessons. The goodness of God did not allow any children to be born to us with me living as I was. The goodness of God has brought me out of religion.

The goodness of God made me realize I was following a man named Paul Washer instead of God himself. The goodness of God is teaching me scripture on my own now. And the goodness of God has brought us to Barnsdall.

The goodness of God made so that none of you actually ever seen the old Jared. The goodness of God gave us a whole new family called Cornerstone Community Church since our family has decided we are following a man instead of God and are being deceived into following a false gospel.

The goodness of God is making me want only Him. The goodness of God opened my eyes to how wrongly I had used the pulpit in times past to declare the word of the Lord. It was all my own flesh and it was usually quoting someone else.

The goodness of God made me not care if He ever used me again to share His word. And the goodness of God allowed me to preach Wednesday night in our new building with the word that He had given me. And the goodness of God will lead me and you and all of His church to a deeper and deeper relationship with Him if we just let Him.

Praise be to my good God. Amen.

God’s Goodness Through Suffering and Cancer

Well, Brian asked me to share my experience of when God... I would like it when He moved my theory and theology of God's goodness into my reality. And you would think that He would reveal His goodness to me during a time of blessing and that has been the case.

But like with so many, many of the times He reveals Himself more through pain than blessing. I'm going to read a little bit of mine too. Many people have asked me what the Lord has taught me or shown me since my now 60-year-old son Luke was diagnosed with cancer almost four years ago.

And has endured two bone marrow transplants. And of course I don't have the time to touch on all of that, but I will touch on one testimony of what God showed me. He did teach me the difference between excellent theology and theories and the relationship with Christ.

If all we have is excellent theology and theories and Christ and His sacrifice is not personal, blessings from God will lead to pride and suffering will lead to bitterness, anger, and cynicism. But if He is yours and you are His, then blessings will lead to humility and suffering will lead to a deeper intimacy.

One of those areas through suffering that God moved my theory into my reality was when Luke was diagnosed with cancer. Not so much right when he was diagnosed, but shortly thereafter. I'm going to be a little bit graphic about what a child or a person goes through with a bone marrow transplant because some of you probably...

I know when I was told that Luke was going to have a bone marrow transplant from the doctors, I knew it wasn't going to be good, but I was really clueless at how horrible this procedure is. Essentially, the doctor looked at us and told us that it's the atomic bomb of chemotherapy.

They will give him as much chemotherapy as they can give him without hopefully killing him. His first transplant, 25 of kids don't survive the first transplant or the transplant. Walking into a transplant unit with the first one that he had, it was just surreal.

The closest picture I can give you, and it's a very close picture, is if you've ever seen people in the Holocaust where they have no hair and they are literally skin and bone. That is what the children look like that are in transplant.

It's very, very different than just the sweet little kids you see on pictures with bald heads. That is not what you see in a transplant unit. It is the absolute most suffering I have ever witnessed, ever.

Some of the things that I saw that was very, very difficult, apart from my own child, which I will get to that in a minute. The kids, what happens is the chemotherapy literally strips you of any mucous membranes from your mouth all the way down to your rectum.

Which doesn't sound like a big deal, except usually kids will get marble-sized sores in their mouth. And literally, one boy, it literally ate his lip off and they had to do surgery to place his lip back on.

It's just horrible what you see in those units. But this particular day, Luke was in the heat of the transplant. The doctors had tried to prepare us for what we were going to see when we got to this point as best as they could.

But there's no way they could fully explain to you what you're about to encounter. But this particular day, Luke's membranes were gone and he was vomiting up the lining of his stomach. It would get stuck in his throat and we would have to suck it out because it was just there and it wouldn't come out.

And he was suffering very, very bad. And it was just really bad. And he had just gone through a really bad episode where he was just vomiting literally the lining of his stomach. And so after he finally settled down for a little bit and he had fallen asleep, I just had to leave the unit for just a little bit.

And I didn't leave at all, really, but just to get outside of the unit, just to walk the halls. I couldn't sleep. And as I was walking the halls, it was one of those things that I had the theology. I knew that God was good, but my reality was not matching my theology at that point.

And my reality was telling me, you're good even with this? And I did not want to question it, but it was coming out in the bucket loads, just in my heart. And I just was really wrestling with the goodness of God.

But thank God, He has a way of moving that into your reality if you will trust Him. And as I was walking the hall, I came across these fresh roses. They do not allow fresh flowers of any kind in a transplant unit, and that's another story.

All you see are walls, cold walls, and it's kind of like an ICU unit with glass doors, so you get to see the other kids very, very sick as well. Occasionally you would see one of them, the curtains would close, the doctors would go in, and you knew the unit would get quiet and that child did not make it.

Occasionally you would see that. So when I walked past these fresh roses, it was the most beautiful thing I'd seen in a long time. And I just sat there and stood there and just looked at these roses, and I just looked at them, and I just remember thinking how perfect they were.

They were just so beautiful and so perfect. And as I looked at these roses, I just thought, God did not have to make roses. He didn't have to make those, and all of a sudden just this flood of the awareness of His goodness.

It's like suddenly He moved it into my reality in a time that you would never ever be able to imagine that you could see or understand the goodness of God. And from that point on, the suffering did not go away, the emotional pain did not go away, but I knew that God was good.