So we have covered a few of the Fruits of the Spirit, and now we are going to take a look at Faithfulness.
Galatians 5:22-23
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
First of all I would like to point out that faith and faithfulness are not the same thing. Faith is believing what you can't see, and faithfulness is being consistent. So the same faith that saved us, is not the same virtue that Paul is talking about in this verse.
There is so much in the Bible about God's faithfulness to His chosen people. The Psalms are loaded with amazing verses talking about the awesome consistency of the Lord. In my opinion one of the most amazing things about God is His Faithfulness. He is the perfect example of it. For example, when Israel continually rejected and outright denied God, He was still there. Even in our own lives. Every time we sin we turn our backs to Him, but God is always willing to forgive us.
Isaiah 25:1
O LORD, you are my God;
I will exalt you and praise your name,
for in perfect faithfulness
you have done marvelous things,
things planned long ago.
Here is an example verse talking about the faithfulness of God.
We covered love a while back, and I believe one of the things we covered is how love is not dependent on anyone, or anything. In other words, if a situation rises up, your love should not waver. Faithfulness is also a one way thing. If you are faithful to someone, that should not change because that person is not faithful to you. We see that with Jesus, like when Peter denied Him three times I am sure that Jesus was still faithful to Peter. If we have faithfulness for anything or anyone it should not depend on them or that, but it should depend on our faith in Jesus Christ. I know it can be hard to make a connection between faithfulness and Fruit of the Spirit, but one of the results of our new life in Christ is faithfulness.
Funny, before writing this I was watching a show about the Labrador Retriever. In the show there was a specific example of a girl who was born with a disability, and she was teamed up with a Golden Retriever. This dog served her until the day it died! The relationship between those two members was almost one way, I mean, the dog had to serve the girl its whole life! The girl did play with it, and give it a home and food, but still. I am sure that Dog sacrificed a lot more than she did.
I guess in many ways this reflects our relationship with God. We are handicapped with our flesh, even when a Christian. And our relationship with God is pretty much one way, I mean, what can we give God, our life? God can easily use something or someone ells. But just like the spirit of the Labrador, God never leaves us, even though we really can't provide something of value to Him.
You could say that this goes to show us that God leaves His trace in His own creation. :) In this case it's faithfulness.
What other examples of God's faithfulness can you think of?
Anything you want to share about God's faithfulness?
-Jerry
I agree that faithfulness is a should never be dependent on the actions of others around you. (Luke 16:10 He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much.)
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, God can always arrange something to be done without our weakness... yet, we are of value to Him as His children. Think of your parents -- you have always been of value to them even though many times you've caused more work for them than what they would otherwise have had to do. The measure of a person's or thing's value is completely subjective to the person measuring. (i.e. I know of people that pay thousands of dollars for autographed items -- things that I wouldn't want for myself at all.) God values our worship; He even goes so far to say that if we don't praise Him, even the rocks will cry out. Though our praise has no monetary value and He doesn't need us to survive, He values our praise and obedience and witness to those around us.
I agree with both of you. Because of lack of faithfulness, we see broken friendships, people leaving the church, destroyed marriages, and separated families. As a child of God, faithfulness is so important. In the same way we are faithful to friends and our church, we need to be faithful to God. We cannot grow in Him if we're not committed and faithful to Him.
ReplyDeleteThinking about it, we can see God's faithfulness to us throughout history. Even though we weren't alive in the time of Noah or later on, Paul, He was thinking of us and graciously gave us the opportunity to be His children. We could have been any other person who's never had the opportunity to know Jesus, but instead, He put us in our respective Christian families with the opportunity to learn about Him and serve Him. He has been faithful to His people by guiding them through history and showing them the path to life. :)