Good things come to those who wait. That old adage is not necessarily true. You can wait for a good thing your whole life and never get it.

And where is the good thing supposed to come from? A popular notion is that the universe is the arbiter of who gets what. I’ve heard people say something like, “The universe is against me,” when they don’t get something they want. Others believe in karma, saying they didn’t get something because they did something they weren’t supposed to do or said something they shouldn’t have said.

But the truth is that the universe doesn’t give you anything. The universe is a created thing, not the creator. Instead,

[e]very good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Faither of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. (James 1:17 (NKJV))

God gives us good things.

God gives good things to those who love Him and to those who don’t. Jesus taught us that God the Father “makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust” (Matthew 5:45 (NKJV)). Think about it. God blesses those who aren’t following Him with all sorts of good things – like family, good health, and money.

But if you are God’s child then you also have a promise to hold onto. God has promised,

No good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly. (Psalm 84:11(NKJV))

Uprightly means without blemish, complete, perfect, without spot, undefiled. God looks on those who follow Jesus as ones who walk uprightly. They obtain their righteousness – their uprightness – not from what they have done but through their faith in Jesus (Philippians 3:9). So, if you are following Jesus, God promises that He will not withhold a good thing from you.

If you have been praying for something that seems good and God has not given it to you then it is not good for you. It may be that the timing is not right. Or it may be something that will never be good for you.

Unlike you, God knows everything. He is eternal and knows all things (1 John 3:20; Revelation 1:8-9). God knows the beginning from the end (Isaiah 46:9-10). He knows everything about you (Psalm 139:1-4). He knows exactly what would happen if He gives something to you – what you will do with it and how it will affect you. In other words, God knows if the thing you’ve been wanting would be good for you.

Let’s put it in perspective. We’ve all seen children who want things they shouldn’t have. Maybe a child wants to eat a candy bar just before dinner. His father tells the child no, and the child gets angry. Why? The child wants the candy right at that moment. But the father knows it would spoil the child’s appetite. If the child eats the candy before dinner, he won’t eat the nutritious food that his body needs. It’s not that the father will never allow the child to eat the candy. The timing is not right.

Or maybe the child wants to play in the street. The father doesn’t let the child do so because the child could get hurt by a passing car. The father will never give his child permission to play in the street. Doing so would never be good for the child.

How much more does God the Father know what is and isn’t good for us than our earthly fathers ever did. God knows what is not good for us now and what will never be good for us. We can trust Him to do what is best for us.