God is good, right? I mean that's what they say in church when things are going well. But what happens when God isn't good? What happens when life just sucks and there's no way to fix it?

I'm going to let you in on a secret... God is in fact always good.

I don't want to get into too much Christian jargon but the basic breakdown is this:

How we define good is not the same way God defines it.

When you think of something good, you probably think about acing a test, winning a game, or seeing a dog on the campus quad. All of those things are good (especially the dog), but our use of the word "good" usually ends there.

We don't tend to refer to flunking a test, losing a game, or getting fired as "good," in fact we probably would call all of those things "bad." But God is an all powerful, all knowing, and all present God who can (and will) orchestrate all the bad things in your life to produce something better, something good.

Bad things happen because it's a broken world.

I know what you're probably thinking: "Why do bad things happen if God is good and all-powerful?" I'm sure there is a really elegant theological answer to this, but I do not intensely study church doctrines and theological concepts, so I can't give it to you.

I do read the Bible, so I can tell you that the world is broken. In Genesis, Adam and Eve let sin into the world by disobeying God, and we have been paying for it ever since. The world we live in is not operating to as it was originally designed. The world has sin, and with sin comes pain, failure, hurt, struggles, and death.

When life is painful, we learn to rejoice.

So God is good and the world with sin is bad. Got it? Good.

Here's the most important point for you: God can take the pain and hurt in your life, and help you grow from it. God will make the bad, good.

Now, I get that this can be hard to swallow if you are going through some intense pain or struggle right now. (I was in the same boat just a few weeks ago.) But just take a moment and look back on something bad that happened to you, whether someone broke up with you, you lost out on an opportunity, you weren't picked for the position, a loved one died, etc. Find the one good thing in that time. What did you learn, who could you lean on, how did it change your perception of the world? Of yourself? Of God?

That growth, that learning from experiences, is good. So instead of getting stuck in the muck of all the bad things going on, look ahead to the good that you can get from the situation. Actually, take it a step further and rejoice in the bad times because God will make it produce good things in your life.

God's good is Great.