Faithful

When driving across the plains, after Great Falls you begin to see the eastern Rockies tower over the plains. What it would have been like to be Lewis and Clark. Trying to reach the pacific and having this unpassable obstacle standing ahead of you.

Sometimes we have impossible obstacles that stand in front of us. Problems that we have no idea how we will be able to get past.

We make the problem, bigger than our God.

This is wrong for two reasons, 1) We are forgetting the faithfulness of our God. 2) We are in danger of not staying faithful to the God who loves us so dearly, that He gave His son to make a way for us to be with Him.

What is Faithfulness

When we use the word “faith,” what we are using it as an action, to believe in something or someone.

Faithfulness however is a state of being. It means that you are trustworthy, dependable. That what is said, is sure to take place.

Faithfulness proceeds from faith. When our faith in God is solid, we know who He is, that He will do what He has promised.

That is when we have the strength to be faithful to Him.

Faithfulness of God

We must start with looking at the qualities of God for in Him we live move and have our being.

The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man’s spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God. A.W. Tozer

What Tozer is saying is that your view of God, will influence how you live.

If you believe God is weak, uncaring, that what He says isn’t relative.

You won’t trust Him in this life.

If you believe that He is ever present, Omnipotent, loving, good.

You will trust Him and be willing to follow Him.

Deuteronomy 7:9 (ESV)

9 Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations,

God will always keep His word. His covenant with us will never fail.

We can rest assure on this for our God is faithful.

Therefore, any promise that He makes in scripture, we know will come to pass. For all the promises of God are yes and amen to those who are in Christ Jesus.

Never leave you or forsake you.

All things he will use for our good and his glory.

He won’t let us go through more than what we can endure.

Throughout scripture, we see faith is the trustful human response to God’s self-revelation through His words and His actions.

Faithfulness, steadfastness is something that proceeds from that faith that is developed in us as we see God being true to His word.

Our Faithfulness

2 Corinthians 4

v.1

Do Not Lose Heart

Do you understand that there is a spiritual war going on?

Do you understand that the moment you begin the work, that God calls you to. You are becoming active in that war.

Do you understand; that there is an enemy, and becasue you are active in this war, the enemy will attack you.

In this life, we are in battle with the world, the flesh, and the devil.

That is three fronts that you are fighting, one of them being within.

Here Paul is encouraging them, it will be hard. DON’T LOSE HEART!

We see a chiasm occuring between v. 1 and v.16

A spiritual sandwich, where Paul urges them not to lose heart, and then covers items that will cause them to loose heart.

Ways We Lose Heart

Disappointments

v.2

Paul writes this because he sees people tampering with the word of God.

Not having a good conscience before God in what they are teaching.

2 Timothy 4:3 (ESV)

3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions,

More and more is seems that we see churches who aren’t holding to strong doctrine, who want to worship the way they want to worship, who want to teach what the people want.

In their case, the God they serve is an idol, for they are creating a god in their image fashioned after the culture rather than on how God has revealed Himself.

Unrepentant People

v.3-4

Do you have people that you try to tell the gospel to, and they don’t get it.

You try to help them through struggles, and they don’t get it.

We have a tendency to get fed up, to become callous and unloving. To say i’m done with you.

Here, we are told, people are sinners.

They are blinded by Satan to where they cannot understand the truth.

Pray for them, don’t become callous and unloving towards them.

Attacked

How many times I have not told the truth, or told the gospel when I should have becasue I was afraid, of not having the right answer, or being ridiculed or made fun of, of being physically assaulted.

When we let fear restrain us, we have lost heart.

v.7-10

Remember that our lives are as fragile as clay pots, easily gone.

But the gospel, that is a treasure that is held within us.

The knowledge of God and of heaven is a treasure held within us.

When you respond with love, you cannot lose.

If they receive what you are saying.

The gospel has gone forth and the victory belongs to God.

If you are persecuted, and respond in love.

It is so different than how the world responds that your actions are remembered;

And the gospel goes foreward and the victory belongs to God.

Whatever happens we are showing the life of Jesus, in our mortal flesh.

So don’t lose heart.

How To Overcome

Give Grace

If it’s none believers we are dealing with.

Remember that they are blinded.

It is’s believers

Ephesians 4:2–3 (ESV)

2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

Let you love (that we as believers should have for one another), be the thing that drives us.

Let us be eager to maintain the unity.

Giving grace to one another as Christ has given grace to us.

Rejoice

This is a hard thing to do when we are being pressed.

But we must realize that this is a time to grow in the Lord.

James 1:2–4 (ESV)

2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

View these trials as a time for God to work in you.

Making you into who He desires you to be.

Taking all of our anxieties that we have through our trials, and placing them on God.

Stay Connected

Hebrews 10:23–25 (ESV)

23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.

24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works,

25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

First, we stay connected to God.

Knowing that He is faithful to bring us through the situations that we are going through.

We stay connected to other believers

We need the encouragement that we can get from fellow shipping and praying with one another.

Keep Our Eyes On Jesus

v.18

Looking at the things that are eternal, not the things that are transient.