Faithfulness: To be faithful is to be steady in allegiance or affection. I believe it is the sticking with it no matter what. If we know God's promises how can we not be faithful? If we know all that God has promised faith should come with that. It is more complicated than that though. Faith is a vast subject. I'm glad I'm talking about it though because it gives me a chance to sport my favorite verse again. Ephesians 2:8-9 "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this not from yourselves, it is a gift of God, not by works". Every time I read this verse it makes me smile. God's grace is what saves us. It has nothing to do with us. There is nothing I can do to cause or cancel my salvation because it is a gift. I take that as a relief. That is God professing his undying love. It's like someone saying to you I love you and there is nothing that could make me stop wanting you. AND HE MEANS IT. There is no questioning it. But there in lies the problem, do we know when our faith is failing?
I have heard several great sermons on faith. Some of it sticks with me and some of it doesn't. This to my best recollection is what I have come up with after reflection. Faith is a verb. You have to do something to be faithful. It's not just something you can be, you have to work it. It is hard work to remain constant. We defiantly need to ask God for his divine faithfulness because you know that we are basically lazy and anything we have to work for is going to be harder to attain. In order to be considered faithful we have to be thorough and strict in the performance of our duty. We cant slack, because we must adhere to the truth. The truth being God's word and his promises. Now If you know what God has promised why are you still doing those things? Why are you sinning? Why are you rejecting God by not following his laws and not spreading his message? It's because it's hard......and also because we lack faith. If you truly, truly, truly believed in everything that God has promised we could never continue disobeying. If you knew that by getting in a car with someone that was drunk you could be killed you wouldn't get into that car would you? In order to get in that car you would have to believe, or convince yourself that nothing would happen to you.
Here is the point of all of this. I never really had a healthy father figure in my life. It didn't used to bother me very much because I had an awesome mother who took up the slack amazingly. In fact to this day she is my hero because all the things she has accomplished must have seen impossible but she didn't say that, she said I've got to do it and with God's help I CAN. Anyway It didn't used to bother me but now I find it is making my faith harder to come by. Not that God wont give me his faith but that I have begun in my relationship with him to talk myself out of it. On the outside to me it seems fairly obvious that if I have faith I can move mountains, it says so in the bible and I believe it. Inside though it is a hard concept for me to master. That there is someone who will never leave me, never disappoint me, never forget about me. Its hard to understand in my heart that I can have the father I always wanted if only I will let him be that. Because of it I talk myself out of my own faith and it suffers. Seeing is believing or so that saying goes, but faith is about not seeing. Faith is believing because God said so and he never lies. It means a lot of work for me. I cannot allow my own life experience block my pathway to God. In my head I see a big room filled with boxes and bags of things that have happened to me and they are so stacked up that I cant see out of the room anymore. Just because I cant see God doesn't mean he isn't there. Its hard to do but I Just have to let go and believe. Let go of all the things I think I know and let God's word be my truth. How to do that? Well the way you learn to trust anyone, relationship, relationship, relationship. When you first meet someone you spend time with them and over that time and the things you surmount together builds trust and assurances. All I have to do is be in a constant relationship with God and let his words ring true.
Faithfulness is a big deal in the military. The service people have to be faithful to there service, wives and husbands have to be faithful to each other. In this sense I think it is more an action as well. We have to be true to our word, promises, and vows. We cant take the easy way out. Not only do we have to be there for our spouse but we have to be there and be trying our best all the time to stay true to what we have promised to be to each other. Marriage is a covenant with God and by being faithful to our spouse we are being faithful to God. And who doesn't want that?
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