You remember the Psalmist said, “The Lord is good. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.” And if the redeemed don’t say so, nobody’s going to say so. So, I’m going to say so: God is good. God is good, friend. That’s wonderful to know. I don’t know who you are, where you are, or how you are, but wherever you are God today loves you. And God wants to save you. And if you’re not saved just because you won’t come to Him because He can save you and He will save you. God is good. That’s an axiom of Scripture and it’s an axiom of life. The Lord is good.

Now the real test of the Christian life, you see, is not on the arena backed by applause. It’s not before the crowd in the coliseum. There were five million martyrs who bear testimony to the truth of the gospel in the first three centuries. They laid down their lives for Christ, but did you know that there were many more million than that who bear witness by the faithful lives they live each day? Nothing spectacular; nothing sensational. Nothing outstanding. They’re just living for God. They have a purpose, they have a direction, and they have a thrilling experience.

Now meekness does not necessarily mean weakness. Now Moses was considered a meek man, but you remember when he got up and talked to the children of Israel, he didn’t sound like a meek man according to our notion of meekness. He spoke right out. And you remember, the Lord Jesus was “meek and lowly,” but He went in and cleansed the temple. Nobody else speaks along these lines today as far as I know. And the thing that’s hurting our churches; somebody should speak out today and say, “Look, brothers, sit down. You’re spoiling things. You ought not to be trying to love the preeminence all the time. You should learn to be meek and let others speak out.

“Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.” Now very frankly, he makes it very clear that he wants him to prosper, not only financially, not only materially, and this man apparently was a man of means. But he says, “I want you to prosper in your health and that you might prosper also in his soul.” That he might grow spiritually, you see. What health is to the body, holiness is to the spiritual life of the believer. Healthy spiritually—that is holiness, growing in grace and in the knowledge of Christ.

John and Paul are writing to people who lived in the Roman world. And in Paul’s day it was Bloody Nero, and in John’s day—for he saw one emperor after another rise that persecuted Christians, beginning with Titus. And the persecution was severe. And yet here are men and women in that Roman world—a brutal world, a cruel world pagan to the core—and yet here are men and women, and they are doing what? They’re walking after His commandments. They’re translating the gospel into life. That is the thing that is desperately needed today.

God will hear the prayers of His children. “And if we know that he hear us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.” Now, that is a wonderful place to come to—to know that you and I have a heavenly Father, we’re in fellowship with Him, that we’re going to pray—not selfishly. Or if we regard sin in our lives or there could be other hindrances to prayer. But when we’re walking in fellowship with Him, we can be sure of one thing—that if we are following Him, that what we ask we can have confidence that He will hear and answer the prayer.

We need confidence in prayer, and it must be according to the will of God. And if you and I are in fellowship with Him, walking with Him, then our prayer would be along that line, of course. It would be for God’s will in our lives. George Muller put it like this. He says, “Prayer is not overcoming God’s reluctance. It is laying hold of His willingness.” That is the important thing. It’s not trying to get God to do something that He’s reluctant to do, but prayer is when you and I are thinking His thoughts after Him. And that is the thing that gives us confidence when we go to God in prayer.

Do you believe God? Do you believe the record that He gave? He says if you have the Son you have life. Now do you believe that? He didn’t say if you feel like it or if you’ve joined something, but He says, “If you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior and if you have Him”—and He says, “That’s the reason I’ve written this epistle to you, that you might know that you have eternal life.” This is made, I think, very clear here: “These are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ”—that’s who He is—“and that believing you might have life through his name.”

The question is do you have Christ? Is He your Savior? Are you trusting Him in such a way that if God would even say to you, “You must have something else,” you’d turn and walk away because you’d say to Him, “I only trusted Christ as my Savior.” My friend, if you haven’t come to that point, you just haven’t come anywhere at all. Because to be saved means you trust Christ, and it means you have Christ as your Savior. “He that hath the Son hath life.” He’s our lifeboat. He’s our lifeline. He’s our only hope. We’re lost without Him. And if we have Him, we have life.

The only miracle cleansing thing that’s in the world today is the Word of God. It can save you—“…born again not by corruptible seed, but by incorruptible, the Word of God that liveth and abideth forever,” for it presents Christ who shed His blood for your sins and my sins. He died for our sins. He was raised for our justification. The Word of God can keep you clean down here. Now you can spray with every kind of a spray deodorant there is; you can rub it on, you can pour it on. And, my friends, it won’t clean you on the inside. Only the Word of God can keep you clean today.