What is Faithfulness?
Notes
Transcript
What is Faith?
What is Faith?
Hello!
Welcome to D-Groups!
I hope the first week of E-Learning has been a learning experience for you and that it is going well.
We are continuing our fruits of the Spirit study as found in Galatians 5:22-23
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
Have you gotten this memorized yet?
I hope so!
We have just two more fruits to discuss after tonight.
And tonight we are going to be talking about faithfulness.
Faithfulness is an interesting fruit of the Spirit that is being talked about here.
Normally when we read about faith it is about our faith in Jesus.
Which is important.
We tend to talk about how we can trust Jesus.
We want to grow in our faith- our trust with Christ.
While we could read this verse and say this is what it is saying.
I think Paul had a different intention.
Paul is talking about Faith in one another.
Because if you have the fruit of the spirit this means that you have faith in Jesus.
The Holy Spirit is living inside of you.
Why would one need to have faithfulness from the spirit in order to be in the spirit more?
If you already have the Spirit based on faith then having more or being more faithful does not line up well with all other fruits mentioned.
Faithfulness in this case is based on how you behave with others.
Are you faithful?
Are you trustworthy?
In 1 Corinthians 13:7, Paul is talking about love as always trusting- never losing faith- This is from the NLT Version
Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
Love as Paul mentions never loses faith.
While we cannot control what others do or say, we must control ourselves with how we interact with one another.
How do you stack up?
Here is the thing, I do think we should care just how people view us.
We do not get hung up on this, but if people think overall you are not kind, untrustworthy, fake, a jerk.
How on earth can you be a witness for Christ?
It’s pretty simple you can’t.
How you act at home, at school, at church and everywhere else, should be the same everywhere.
Do people trust you?
Do they have faith in you?
Not the saving faith we have in Christ, but are you reliable?
Are you trustable?
I personally believe everyone until they give me reason to doubt them.
I give everyone the benefit of the doubt.
I think for the most part this is everyone default.
UNTIL...
Someone breaks our trust.
And when someone breaks our trust we tend to not have faith in them.
I recall when I worked for Hy-Vee, as an assistant manger at the time.
I liked to run a pretty tight ship, and I would know where everyone was, and I would give everyone different task to do.
There was this one person who was working who lots of people had trouble with the guy, but I thought you know what, i believe this guys can turn it around.
I encourage him and showed that I believed in him.
There was some rumblings that he would walk over to burger king and eat while he was suppose to be doing karts.
So I asked him if this was something that was going on.
To which he said no, they were lying.
So I gave him the benefit of the doubt.
No evidence no proof it was a he said she said moment.
However, the next time this guy worked, i sent him out on karts and I just so happened to walk outside and not see him out there.
Strange, maybe he was in the restroom, until I saw him across the street at burger king....
Well needless to say that was his last day working at Hy-Vee.
I tell this story because could I have listened to everyone and what they said originally sure, but maybe there was hope for him.
I wanted to trust him and I did.
Until the evidence was overwhelming.
He broke me trust in him.
This does not mean that we just write him off, I mean we do when it comes to a job.
But as people to people.
We continue to witness and be lights to them, but we may be a little bit more cautious around this person and that person.
Think about your own life and has there been chances for you to be honest and trustworthy?
How did you do in that moment.
Because you can also be called to give an account and if you are lying, or only telling half the truth, you might get away with it for a bit, but eventually you will be found out.
That is just one example, I can think of way more examples where by giving someone a chance they surprise you and show you that they are capable of being trustworthy.
Be faithful-trustworthy people.
People will look away from you, they will stop listening if we break their trust but they will write us off, but if you can be honest and faithful, you will have a better chance of speaking truth into their lives.
Live honest, and truthful lives.
“Tell a lie once and all your truths become questionable.”
What are some things that are untrustworthy?
What has someone done to you to cause them to be untrustworthy?
What is something you have done to lose trust with others?
