Meditations on the Fruit of the Spirit - Faithfulness

What if you woke up one day into what seemed like a children’s book titled “Upside Down Day”? The ceiling was below you and the floor overhead.  When you brushed your teeth, the water ran up toward the ceiling. All the rules were opposite of what they usually are. Stop signs included the words, “if you want to”. The elevator buttons chose all the wrong floors. You get it.

While it would make a fun premise for a make-believe story, in real life it would be a nightmare. We need things to be “in place.”  Some of us need that more than others (raises hand).  But we all depend, at the very minimum, on every law of nature being consistent 100% of the time.

Fortunately, in six days, God created a world where everything worked in perfect harmony, and it has continued to do so from that day to this.  Because of gravity, we can drink. Because of friction, we can stop our cars. God’s laws of nature help us breathe, cook, see, and hear.  Even when we “defy” the laws of nature, like flying across the country in an airplane, we use the laws God set in place to accomplish our work. 

Our daily existence on this earth relies on a faithful God.  Listen to the words of the Psalmist in Psalms 33:4-9:

For the word of the Lord is upright, And all His work is done in faithfulness. He loves righteousness and justice; The earth is full of the lovingkindness of the Lord. By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of His mouth all their host. He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap; He lays up the deeps in storehouses. Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him. For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast.

When do we long for God’s faithfulness? Certainly as we try to make sense of our physical world.  But we long for His faithfulness in keeping His promises.  I don’t know a Christian who can post a picture of the rainbow without adding, “The Lord keeps His promises.”

“Know therefore that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God, who keeps His covenant and His lovingkindness to a thousandth generation with those who love Him and keep His commandments…” (Deut 7:9). The promises God kept to Abraham have brought us to Christ. The promised shoot that sprang from the stem of Jesse has come to judge with righteousness, and fairness and power - “faithfulness is the belt about His waist” (Isaiah 11:1-5). We long for God to be faithful in His promise that He has gone to prepare a place for us and will receive us to Himself there (John: 14:3).

We desire God’s faithfulness in His righteousness.  We want to look to Him every day in every way to know what is right. Moses sings in Deut. 32:5: “The Rock! His work is perfect, for all His ways are just; A God of faithfulness and without injustice, righteous and upright is He”.

We want God’s faithfulness in judgment. We rejoice with Psalm 96:13: “Let the field exult, and all that is in it. Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy before the LORD, for He is coming… to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in His faithfulness.”  We want a God Who will judge by one standard for all - and that, a standard of truth.

We depend on God’s faithfulness in the presence of our enemies.  I’m quoting from segments of Ps.143:1-4: “Hear my prayer, O LORD, give ear to my supplications…Answer me in Your faithfulness, in Your righteousness…For the enemy has persecuted my soul…my spirit is overwhelmed within me.”

Is there a time when I doubt or reject God’s faithfulness?  Sadly, all too often, the answer to what seems a nonsensical question is yes.  It’s so easy for the trials and burdens of this life to leave us overwhelmed.  Like David, I could say, “ I meditate on all Your doings; I muse on the work of Your hands. I stretch out my hands to You; my soul longs for You, as a parched land” (Ps. 143:5-6). But too often I become short-sighted.  I allow the world and its cares to eclipse my view of God, and then I turn to despair in the present rather than faithfulness because of the past and the future.

Perhaps it’s my own desires that turn me from God’s faithfulness.  Satan has lured me with the fruit of the tree and convinced me that my own happiness is more important than righteousness.  Perhaps I feel like God should make some provision for me and my circumstances because they are just too difficult.  I’m willing to sacrifice the faithfulness of God that has been the hope of all generations to chase my dreams and “live my truth.”

Where can I look that will bring me back to submission to the faithfulness of God? Certainly to the world around me.  To water that flows into my cup and not to the ceiling.  To a sun that rises every. single. morning.  Hopefully, that will ground me enough to come back to His word.  Even the most casual daily reading of God’s word will remind me of the promises He’s made and kept and the ones I need Him to keep.

Join in reading with me, the “word search” queen:  “Your lovingkindness, O LORD, extends to the heavens, Your faithfulness reaches to the skies” (Psalm 36:5). “…God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able…” (1 Cor 10:13). “If we are faithless, He remains faithful…” (2 Tim 2:13).  Like wisdom calling from the streets, God is reminding us over and over again that He is faithful.  When we think we can keep sight of that without daily devotion to reading, meditation, and prayer, when we allow worldly desires to fill our time and our minds, the fruit of faithfulness will wither on our vine.

The world tells us to “hang on.”  Hebrews 10 tells us to “hold fast.” Hold fast to what? “Hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful”.  But the encouragement doesn’t stop at the end of our own rope.  Immediately, we are told “and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds.”  To consider each other, to assemble, to encourage, and to do so with a sense of urgency, “as you see the day drawing near” (Hebrews 10:23-25).

There are many days, as there should be, that as the sun rises in the east and gravity holds our feet to the floor, that we bound out of bed in praise to the faithfulness of God. There are other days when, in desperation like Job we cry out in anguish, or like David, we stretch out our hands, pleading for God to hear us.  Every day, as we seek Him, He will assure us that Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, has conquered. He is the Rider on the white horse, the One called Faithful and True (Rev 19:11).