Two weeks ago I spoke on Unmistakable Faithfulness. The main point of the night was this: If you
believe that God is faithful, you will never need to worry again. Sound Cliché? Maybe. But, I think that scripture
heavily supports that statement.
By Faithfulness, I mean “the quality of being faithful.” In the Old Testament, faithfulness is often
used in tandem with the word truth. This
is because they both derive from the same Hebrew root of Aman, which means to
confirm, support, or uphold. In the
Greek, faithfulness derives from the word Pistis. In the active tense it means
faith, and in the passive it means faithfulness. Scholars actually differ sometimes in the New
Testament in terms of translation on whether a passage should say “faith in God”
or “God’s faithfulness.”
Anyway, how do you test to see if someone is faithful? One way is to see if they follow through with
their promises. Throughout the Bible,
there are many stories of God making promises to people. Check out the story of
Noah in Genesis 6. God promises to bring
a flood, and he also promises to keep Noah and his family safe. If you are familiar with the story, both of
these promises come to pass. Can you
imagine how foolish Noah would have looked if he spent multiple years building
a giant boat and then the flood never happened?
What about the story of Moses and the Israelites in Exodus 3. God was faithful to bring them out of Egypt
and into the promised land EVEN THOUGH they constantly rebelled and did not
trust Him.
God is faithful even when we are faithless. We see this in the story of the Israelites,
but Paul even mentions it specifically in one of his letters to Timothy. 2 Timothy 2:13 says “if we are faithless, he
will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself.” Faithfulness is a part of God’s
character. When he says something will
happen, it has to happen. And, nothing
can stop it from happening because he is all-powerful. You see, I can’t be 100 percent faithful to
something because I don’t have power over everything. I can say I will be faithful to come to
Athletes in Actions meetings, but if a drunk driver hits me on my way, I don’t have
the power to follow through with the promise.
God is omnipotent, so nothing can keep him from following through with
that which He has promised.
So…..what does God promise us. He has promised us salvation (Romans 10:8, I
John 5:13). He has promised us help in
temptation (I Corinthians 10:13). He has
promised us help in witnessing (Matthew 28:19-20). He has promised that He works for the good of
those who love him (Romans 8:28). This
last one is sort of a “catch all” for worry.
Worried about money? God will work everything out for your good. Worried about your future job? God will work
everything out for your good. Worried about your future spouse? God will work
everything out for your good.
If you believe that God is faithful,
you will not need to worry. When you
start to worry, remind yourself that God is faithful. Write it on your refrigerator. Tape it to your steering wheel. You can never be reminded enough about this
attribute of God’s amazing character.
-Brandon
