From the desk of Steve Shultz:
This is an excellent word to start off the New Year. The earth is FULL of the Goodness of God...yes!
Let this word by Joey LeTourneau help you to see and recognize His goodness that IS all around us: I believe there is more goodness floating about unseen each day – all around us – that waits for us to prove its truth and let it ooze out on everyone in proximity. There are life-giving opportunities awaiting us all, hoping for new pioneers that will uncover all His good that is waiting to be revealed and exposed for who He really is: an abundant, life-giving Father!
Blessings,
Steve Shultz
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Joey LeTourneau:
A New Standard of Expectation: Full of His Goodness
...The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord. Psalm 33:5
I love this word! What a declaration; that the earth is full of the goodness of God! But how often do we see it otherwise? How often do we expect the opposite? Have we set our eyes to find the evil, the offense, or that which we disagree with?
I believe there is more goodness floating about unseen each day – all around us – that waits for us to prove its truth and let it ooze out on everyone in proximity. There are life-giving opportunities awaiting us all, hoping for new pioneers that will uncover all His good that is waiting to be revealed and exposed for who He really is: an abundant, life-giving Father!
The above word from Psalm 33:5 could very easily be seen as familiar. For me, God brought it to life one day in a new way. When I read it that time, while watching a football game, a new visual definition popped up before my spiritual eyes. 
His goodness came to life as I saw a world that, wherever my path traveled, was full of floating bubbles just waiting to be popped open.
In each bubble there was a burst of God's goodness that was waiting to water the earth and heal the dry places. But how easy it can be to walk on by going about our own agenda, being led by our expectation's eyes while the Father looks for those who will prove what is real according to His. If we will seize all these opportunities of His goodness, then we must change what our past, our fears, and our hurts have programmed us to look for. We must live with a new standard of expectation! (Photo courtesy: Richard Heeks)
A New Standard of Expectation
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. 1 John 4:18
I was once in a meeting with a young man in Africa who had picked up an offense toward my family and me. As we walked through the conversation, he started to see some of the lies he had begun to believe from the accuser, and how those lies began to shape his vision of reality. Then he said something very interesting to me. The young man spoke, "Well, I've been taught that our expectation is our reality."
I was amazed, because whether he knew it or not, he hit the nail on the head. Our expectation does shape the reality we most often participate in. It shapes our prayers, our hopes and dreams, our conversations and relationships. It shapes how we interact with, and how we reveal, the goodness of God.
We need a new standard of expectation, and I believe this is what God is raising up in each of us right now. God has made fully available to us all a perfect love that squashes all the fears, hurts, and memories of our past that seek to torment us, limit our expectation, and hide the excessive goodness of God from being uncovered.
This new standard of expectation frees us from the fear of the past repeating itself in a circumstance or relationship. It empowers us to keep walking one step at a time through our current circumstances, trusting Him fully rather than fearing how the parted waters might fall back in upon us. We destroy our fear of negative surprises, realizing that with God, our abundantly good Father, we don't have to fear unknown surprises anymore because His love is that perfect and we can always expect accordingly.
Our foreboding of what is to come can pass like a cloud and be replaced with an anticipation of that next bubble of His goodness we will find and pop open for ourselves, or for another. We are being renewed in our expectation to flip the fears the enemy wants us to prove and expect new answers that are defined by God's inexpressibly perfect, whole, complete and ferocious love for you and me! This is a perfect love-based expectation.
We have to trade in our frequently tainted, earthly version of the word "perfect" for God's definition of what such perfection of love really means. We have little to compare it to here on earth because there are few living definitions of what perfect really means in God's eyes. His definition of perfect gives peace and freedom, because there is no gap, no hole, no need to fear what might make it past its perimeter. His love is all-consuming, surrounding us with complete security and a new foundation to launch out and expect nothing less than to discover and bring to life His goodness wherever we go, whomever we are with.
Life-Giving Opportunities
...I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly. John 10:10
There are life-giving opportunities everywhere we go. This fear that trots about with its accusations, masquerading as an imperfect love, has stolen much from God's children. But we can give it all back in the name of Jesus! His goodness is everywhere we go, hoping to be uncovered and proven by our renewed faith and expectation.
We don't need a great, formal, or organized ministry or church to live out such life-giving purpose. We don't need a title or recognition from others. God uses all of those things, but His goodness does not rely on them as much as it relies on you and me to expect and prove its reality. Jesus didn't say He came to do ministry and do it more effectively. He said He came to give life and give it more abundantly! That can be our vision too, and His goodness will be what provides for our life-giving lifestyle and encounters.
The earth is FULL of His goodness, waiting for us to expect it, recognize it, anticipate it, and take what's inside each of those previously hidden bubbles and reveal such to the world. When we change our expectation to anticipate His version of good instead of whatever it might be we are afraid of, we will take the waters of His perfect love and watch them transform the most desolate or dry people and places, including ourselves.
Because truly, the whole earth already IS full of His goodness! Do you see it yet? Receive a new standard of expectation, newly defined by His perfect love for you.
Joey LeTourneau
M.A.R.K. 10:14 Family/Heavenly Hope Ministries
Email: joey.letourneau@gmail.com
Website: bringhishope.org / uncommonvision.org
Joey LeTourneau, his wife Destiny, and their four daughters live near Denver, Colorado. They travel extensively, empowering the Body of Christ to draw near to their First Love and live out the life-giving testimony of Jesus to the world around them. They desire to see the Father's heart fully revealed to the world, and through such see a multiplication of life so abundant the whole world will know the true nature of our Father! Joey has authored two books, Revolutionary Freedom, and his new release, The Life Giver.
