I saw the picture of the billboard that said “GOD IS GOOD!” After being on the road for several hours earlier when traveling for the holidays, it seemed appropriate that I would encounter lots of signs… but none quite like this.

See, this wasn’t something that I saw through the window of my car. It was, instead, something that I saw through the window of the Air1 website. Recently played, and now playing… Cody Carnes, from the GOD IS GOOD! album.

It was December 22, 2022. Four songs from Cody Carnes were added to Air1 that year: “Firm Foundation (He Won’t),” “Good (Can’t Be Anything Else),” “Take You At Your Word,” and “Ain’t Nobody.” Air1 got the features in quite early because the song “Firm Foundation” didn’t show up on most Christian radio stations until 2023, and “Take You At Your Word” didn’t show up until just recently in mid-2024.

That was when I heard the song “Good (Can’t Be Anything Else)” for the first time. I will drop the words in parentheses to keep it simple.

Those words, though, were what got me originally paying attention to the song. You’re saying that God is good and that God CAN’T be anything else. Are you trying to define what God can be? Isn’t that a contradiction to the belief that God can do anything? (All things are possible for God, in other words.)

This seemed like a very odd, if not risky, phrase. I realized, though, after reading an explanation, that the song is simply retelling the story of God… God is good, and God is not anything else. That’s our belief. That’s the nature of God as goodness. We’re not defining what God can or can’t be in this song… we’re just proclaiming the beauty of who God is.

After that, the song made a bit more sense to me. As it was one of the top songs of the month, when I listened to Air1 throughout the next ten days, I would hear it come on many times.
Each time was a reminder and a celebration of how I remember that God had been so good to me… blessing me with opportunities (joys and sorrows) of immense quality and impact in how I had lived out my life. For me, I was still in the Covid-19 pandemic, or at least within its grip, so I had thought about how although there had been a pandemic for the past three years, I had been blessed in many ways. I thought of a particular blessing during New Year’s Eve in 2020, something that I had kept in mind all year of 2021 and all year of 2022 and wanted to celebrate.
I can’t retell the story of that blessing here as it would take too long, but just think about a time of blessing where all of the things you had been hoping and expecting just came together for a special moment in a very limited time, in a way that the situation had told you would likely never happen again… Yes, it felt like there was no other explanation but that God had arranged all these things to fall together so that I could remember Him in that moment.

Another song of celebration was also circulating around the Air1 songs that week. It was called “Everything U Do” by River Valley Ages. At first glance, I had in my mind, hmm… another one of those songs that addresses God as “U”… uhhhh! That was after a few years before seeing TobyMac’s “I just need U.” (There was also Aaron Cole’s “ONLY U.”) Whatever, I’ll just go with it, I decided.

“Good” and “Everything U Do” are both songs of celebration about what God has done and who God is… with a specific focus on a personal experience with God.

I had something that I had been working on the entire year and had challenged myself to complete before the end of the year. It turned out that just a couple of days before the end of the year, I had accidentally miscalculated or forgot to do something that caused me to lose out on a day of progress, a major setback with just a couple of days left in the year. It looked like I wasn’t going to finish it by the end of the year. God had other plans, things more important than me finishing my personal goals. The fun would have to continue into 2023.

That New Year’s Eve in 2022, I was in a similar place that I had been in New Year’s Eve in 2020, except this time, the world wasn’t shut down due to the pandemic. So that night, instead of wandering around trying to find where the church had moved its seats outside to allow for social distancing, my family and I were sitting inside the church. During the Celebration, I had to pay extra attention to the prayers that evening. The situation just called for it. What else could the end of 2022 be known for? I had in mind that celebration message and the lyrics of the song “Good” in my head… so I decided to listen to the prayer of the moment in a very special way.

As the Pastor said the prayer, I listened to see if he would say the word “good.” I didn’t hear it. I listened for references of how God is good. I didn’t catch on to anything.

That was, until the very end, I heard the words ALL… THAT… IS… GOOD!

You can’t possibly imagine the joy that went through my head when I realized how “Good” was the last word in that prayer. Sure, I had heard that prayer many times before, but had I actually paid attention? I wasn’t expecting it, but I was looking out for it. And so, that night, God taught me the importance of paying attention to the prayers in the sense of looking out for key words and references about His goodness.

Just like the prayer ended with good, so did the year… for me, in my mind. I was waiting for a miracle. Well, not the type of miracle where random things pop out of the air without any proof, or sickness finally gets healed. What I was looking for was all the pieces coming together in a moment of fulfillment and the pieces of the year all made sense… in my mind, that takes the plan of God. It didn’t look like it was coming. Later in the evening, I prayed a prayer of appreciation for God being there for me throughout the week and the year and for the music being there to encourage me.

Then, within seconds, out of nowhere, a very special moment opened up to celebrate the year and the past gone by… something so rare and so joyful that hadn’t happened since that night way back then in December 31, 2020. It blew my mind, but my mind didn’t fall out of my head that time. Not yet, of course.

So the year ended with the celebration, God is good. I was so inspired that I had to do something great with my time before I went to bed. I couldn’t stay up until midnight, sorry. But what I could do was play a song or two so that whenever I would think back to 2022, the last thing I would remember doing was something good and positive. That was me trying to help my future self. So now, whenever I think back to 2022, I remember how I sat down and listened through “Everything U Do” and “Good” in a sense of major celebration. God being good had won the year.

Fast forward to December 31, 2023. Unfortunately, it didn’t have the exciting finish that 2022 did. I faced a lack of excitement that evening, as what I had expected from the year before didn’t come up. However, I remembered what happened 365 days earlier and I still had the strength to type down a personal reflection (to write a journal-type thing about the conclusion of the year) with the words “God is good.”

In fact, I wrote down more than that. I put, “I have the freedom to have a happy ending. God has provided me with many exciting blessings in the past, and He is not going to stop working. So I will keep following. God is good.” My happy ending would be saying that God is good no matter what. That song, that prayer, and that experience from December 31, 2022 had created an internal and eternal impact. Every year, I can find the strength to say that God is good no matter what is happening, good or bad. I believe that God has planned good things, and maybe my timing is off a little bit… but even greater is coming, even if I can’t see it now. That’s the faith that comes from the eternal impact. That’s the motto for every ending and every beginning. In 2024, I wrote down some days ago in December, I would do the same.

The reason I had that brought to mind on December 31, 2023, was because of the song “Bless God” from Brooke Ligertwood. The line mentioning blessing God with empty hands caught my attention especially, because I knew in that moment, the same type of excitement of the past wasn’t with me. God had left my hands empty of that type of excitement. But I think this was for a good reason… to teach me a lesson to celebrate God no matter what, to teach me that I didn’t need to have something super exciting in order to celebrate God. Sure, God had greatly blessed me in the past several times, enough to keep blessing me in a specific way that looked like it wouldn’t happen again, and that was enough to believe that He would be with me forever.

“Everything U Do” and “Good” were my celebration songs of 2022.

I had thought of that idea to play a song to celebrate the year from a couple years before in 2020. An incredible blessing had presented itself, and I remembered how I had journeyed throughout the year thinking of a previous blessing and how that excitement could come back, how God could bless me again. Sure, it did seem self-centered, but God encourages us to ask for what we think we need… and I did feel like I needed it after a difficult season of a pandemic-obtained half virtual, half in-person life. I thought of the journey with God and how God had walked with me throughout the year when I listened to the song “Fires” by Jordan St. Cyr.

In 2021, on New Year’s Eve, I had the song “[wonder working]” from All Creatures. This song celebrates the wonder working power of God… celebration and applications. I just haven’t gotten into the habit of looking up at the stars yet. (I plan to work on that star-observation later this year.)

There have been a few more songs I have used throughout my life journey to remind me of celebration for the time gone by and of hope for the time that is coming ahead. One of those in 2020 was PEABOD’s “Wonderful And Scary.” It’s a very personal celebration, one which I think Peabod doesn’t want us to stay out of. I was joining in with him in the concept of celebrating, even if I didn’t know all of his life story. I have been in the area he is from, though, so I did have some sense of understanding, at least about the place.

In 2023, to celebrate halfway through the year… the crossing from June to July, I had the song “My Light” from Colton Dixon. That was a celebration of how God would light the way. It helped me to have even more hope… and I definitely had a ton of hope for the year ahead at that point.

In 2023, another song I had by the end of the year was “Undefeated 3.0” by DPB. It’s another celebration song, this time about overcoming struggles with God. It is my favorite personal celebration song (right now) in the way it talks about overcoming with God.

To celebrate halfway through 2024, I had “Led Me To You” from Sean Curran. It’s another celebration song, just like all of the other ones, but this time focusing on how all the circumstances lead us to God. God uses the good, the even better, the bad, and the even worse to lead us to Him. Sure, that’s what my story can say. Is that the same for you?

In 2024, my New Year’s Eve celebration/remembering/scenario was different from those of previous years. I was in a different place than I had been the previous New Year’s Eves, and I had also come from a late afternoon/evening of struggling while being outside in the dark and stuck in a thunderstorm for an hour… so I was just happy that I had made it home that evening and hadn’t been stuck outside in the cold under the lightning and the heavy rain for too long.
That night, I had the perfect idea. One of my favorite songs throughout the year 2024 was “Weatherboy” by Matthew Parker. It isn’t a worship song, and it isn’t the same type of celebration as the others. It doesn’t even mention God. But it does mention something very relevant to my life (and probably yours)… the journey through good, bad, tough, and overwhelming complexities. It’s a metaphor of life and seasons, talking about not being able to stop the rain. Yes, I can’t stop the rain… whether it’s a flood of good things or a flood of bad things, usually it’s not in my control. But Matthew Parker and Sam Bowman put up a positive attitude throughout all of it, accepting their powerlessness (as “weather-boy”s) and saying to find the beauty (gold) in it all. That’s the beauty that starts writing a story, a testimony, a message about a journey with God.
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