Faithfulness: The fruit of the Spirit (XI)

According to the dictionary the characteristics of faithfulness include loyalty, constancy, true-heartedness, dependability, reliability, trustworthiness and are keepers of promises.” Now God is supremely faithful. In the face of our unfaithfulness He remains faithful. The Scripture puts it this way “If we are unfaithful, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny who He is” ( 2 Timothy 2:13). Faithfulness then is who He is, it is His DNA, it is firmly fixed within His character. And unlike us, He will never do something uncharacteristic of Himself, not even once. He is unchanging and our rock (Psalm 18:2)!

In the context of being careful about making vows, we read in Ecclesiastes 5:4 “When you make a vow to God, do not delay to fulfill it. He has no pleasure in fools.” Concerning vows to each other Jesus tells us “Let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ be ‘No.’ For whatever is more than these is from the evil one” (Matthew 5:37). And one of the things the Lord tells us concerning the character of those who would abide in with Him, is that “they keep their promises, no matter what the cost” (Psalm 15:1,4). Especially relevant here is the meaning our ‘yes!” The parable Jesus told about the two sons (Matthew 21:28-32) comes to mind. He asked them both to go work in the vineyard. One said ‘no,’ but later changed his mind and went. The second son said ‘yes,” but did not go. Jesus tells that the first son was doing his father’s will. Long story short, it is better so say no than to say yes and be unfaithful to what we have said.

And saying ‘no’ is a problem for many of us, and for the longest time that was me. There can be all sorts of things that can lie behind such behaviour. We may be people pleasers, we may not want the confrontation that saying no would bring. We may be like the second son, just wanting to get them off our back, but have no intention of following through. And as I have been saying, all of these things likely require practice, as the Lord brings these things to our attention in His ongoing polishing of our character. If I am in doubt I often tell people “Let me get back to you on that.” Of course I need to. I find that many times people ask me to keep something in prayer, and I have learned to say “Let me pray for that with you right now.” I have had to repent of saying yes, and then later not even remembering what I was supposed to pray about!

Father, as with other aspects of the fruit of Your spirit when we spend time with You, Your virtues rub off on us. And You are truly faithful. It’s not that I have everything that You have promised, but in the words of a song I certainly felt that the walls would have fallen by now, but “This is my confidence, You never failed me yet!” And Lord I pray for all reading this this blog both that we would learn to be faithful, and also to trust in Your faithfulness even when we don’t see it, and the answer is long delayed. You have a purpose in the waiting and a lot of this is character polishing so that we may look more and more like Your Son in whose Name we pray Amen