“Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. By his own choice, he gave us birth by the word of truth so that we would be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

I’m away chaperoning camp this week with some of our awesome kids. I’ll still plan to post something each day, but it is going to be short and not about Exodus. Instead, I’ll give you a look into what we will be talking about this week. The theme for the week is Wow Factor, and we’re talking about the kind of things God does for us that make us say, “Wow!” First up and as we talked about tonight, God gives us good gifts.

One of the things I say often to my church is that if we don’t get God’s character right, there’s a great deal about the Scriptures that we are not going to be able to make positive sense out of. There are plenty of stories—especially in the Old Testament narratives, but not entirely so—that seem to portray God in a pretty negative light. If we don’t approach those with a proper understanding of who God is that is informed by the whole of the Scriptures rather than a few hard stories mostly taken out of context, we are going to be far more likely to buy into the idea that He isn’t good.

The truth, though, is that God is good. It is further true that we can see His goodness all over the Scriptures. It appears in story after story. One episode after another showcases the surpassing goodness and graciousness and kindness of the God who chose the Scriptures as the primary means by which He would introduce Himself to us. It appears in the stories that are easy and fun. It appears in the stories that are much harder and require some truly determined effort to see His goodness. Yet it is there. It is always there. Because God is good.

James here reminds us of this goodness in a really neat way. For starters, James was Jesus’ half-brother (same mom; different dads). That’s always been a pretty remarkable fact to me all by itself. To understand why, consider a simple question: What would your brother have to do to convince you that He was the Messiah? James was a committed follower of Jesus. He was convinced His brother was His Lord. He was also the leader of the church in Jerusalem. He wasn’t always so convinced. It took an encounter with His brother after He was raised from the dead to push James over the edge into an unwavering belief.

In any event, James here tells us not to be deceived. He said that because this is a point on which people are easily deceived. If they weren’t (and aren’t), He wouldn’t have given us the reminder that follows. What we are deceived about is God’s character. We can easily start to believe He is other than He is, that He is a source of evil in the world who hates His people, and who delights in doing wrong by them. If you’ve been through a hard season, you’ve probably questioned Him on this very point. I don’t blame you. I would too.

When we understand God’s character properly, though, getting deceived even by hard circumstances (whether in our own lives, or the lives of others) isn’t nearly such an easy thing to experience.

And what is God’s character that we shouldn’t be deceived? He is good. Not only that, because He is good, He gives good gifts. In fact, as James puts it, every good and perfect gift comes from Him. When you have something good in your life, that good thing came from God.

But what about the bad things? Did those all come from the devil? Perhaps, but not exclusively or even mostly. In fact, he’s likely to blame for very little of it. We do a pretty good job creating our own hard circumstances by the poor choices we make to live other than by His character. And, where we aren’t to blame, we often experience the collateral of someone else’s foolish choice.

But here’s the thing about God’s being good. Sometimes His good gifts aren’t things we recognize right away. What’s more, sometimes things that could easily go sideways on us, when we entrust them to Him and live out His character in them, He redeems them and turns what was intended by someone for evil into an enormous blessing. Because God’s character doesn’t change, this is actually something we can count on happening.

What this means is that you can safely be on the lookout for His God’s gifts in your life. In fact, you should be on the lookout for them. You should do this in your own life, and in the lives of the people around you to help them see things they might otherwise miss. This discipline of gratitude will only ever make your life better.

And, as it turns out, this is God’s plan for you. That’s v. 18. He chose you for this so that you can prototype this blessing-giving person for the rest of the world to see and experience what life in His kingdom is like. This—you—is how He invites others into His kingdom by accepting the greatest gift of justification and eternal life in Christ as a part of His family. He has other means, sure, but this one is always His first choice.

God’s greatest gift is Himself, given through His word and His Son (who is the ultimate expression of His word). When and as you follow Jesus, you become a part of that gift. Today, look for opportunities to be the gift God made you in Christ to be.