The Pastor’s Piece, Pastor Kevin Creek, FCFI Chaplain

FCFI

May 25, 2025

The goodness of God. The people who really experience the goodness of God are those who are His children. The others, in choosing to reject God, choose to reject His goodness. But those of us who by grace have come to believe in God through Christ understand that He is good. God, in fact, in Himself is an infinite and an inexhaustible treasure of all blessedness, enough to fill all things. The God that we believe is the God of whom the Psalmist said, “The goodness of God endureth continually,” Psalm 52:1. The Psalmist affirmed that in all of life there is an overpowering sense of the goodness of God.

I met an old farmer a few years ago who was not a religious man at all. In fact, he was against religion. By that I mean, during his whole life, up till then, he wanted nothing to do with God. He was skeptical of preachers mainly because as a young man he had been advised by his grandfather to stay away from us because he was told, all we wanted was his money. But his curiosity got the best of him and eventually he requested a visit from me, a preacher. When I visited, he gave me the history of his life and his family. He was a successful farmer, his children were all successful in their chosen professions, and his grandchildren loved him and his wife and everything was good … except … he had just discovered he had a terminal illness and was only expected to live a couple months.

I had my work cut out for me, because if you know farmers, you know that they are fiercely independent people who don’t need help from anybody, and if they do, they certainly will not ask for it. But there are some things pure grit and determination won’t accomplish. One of them is getting your soul ready for eternity. That’s what he wanted to talk about. I told him that it’s really not complicated. The Apostle Paul said: “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved, for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.” He ended up asking for God’s forgiveness and in faith, he put his trust in Jesus to save him. A few weeks later he passed away and went into eternity.

There is another man I know who wrote God off many years ago when he was drafted into the Army. In spite of our faith differences (he had none), we became friends. During one of our conversations, I made the comment that God is near to us when we reach out to Him. His response was: “Oh yeah? Where was God when I went to Vietnam and my buddy died in my arms during combat?” He was mad at God.

I don’t have the ability to turn one’s heart toward God – but God does. In fact, in the Bible, God says: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh,” (Ezekiel 36:26). Later this man came to church with me. He told me it was the first time in over five decades that he had been in church. What impressed him the most was that there were young people sitting in front of him who brought their Bibles and followed along during the sermon and even took notes. He didn’t think young people went to church anymore, let alone took notes while they were there. Eventually he too, gave his heart to Jesus and was saved by God from the clutches of hell.

Finally, I have a story about a man I met from Chicago. After he retired, he and his wife moved to the pastoral countryside outside of Martintown, Wisconsin where they bought a little piece of land and began to build a new house. About half way through the project, his wife passed away very unexpectedly. Understandably, he was devastated. After her death, he quit living. He sold the unfinished property and moved into a little house in town and became a hermit. But people from our church befriended him. It wasn’t long until they brought him to church with them. Another man and his wife at church also befriended him and the husband invited him to ride along and be his wingman when he drove a snow plow for the township. The man started enjoying those adventures and eventually God broke through into his heart. When he passed away, our church lost a best friend, and heaven received a saint. His funeral was a celebration of life.

God has a plan and a purpose for you.

(Kevin Cernek is Lead Pastor of Martintown Community Church in Martintown, Wisconsin).