God Faithful

Arizona Lake 1989

Folks in general don’t want to talk about anything too negative. Why is that? Darkness and light are both alike to God, but not to us. Psalm139:12. 

See, the highway of holiness admits and allows the wayfaring man, and the fool does not err therein. Isaiah 35:8. This gives all of us entry there, but few find it.

For this reason men struggle still with the hills and valleys of life and mostly ride the ups and downs. We have a tendency to see God as a mere moral One and prosperity means God’s favor, where adversity means God is mad at us. To most He is a God of circumstances.

Let me open a thought. Do we have an expectation for our life, or are we contented to handle anything that life dishes up? Careful. Well no, we are not contented to take anything, we have an expectation. Agreed to a degree. 

So, what is and how is that expectation going to occur? Hard work, prayer, study, etc. is what we suppose will do it. Or does it occur in not envying sinners, keeping in the fear of the Lord all the day long, eating honey and the honeycomb, receiving the knowledge of wisdom and its reward, and having an expectation that concurs with God’s? All are from Bible verses.

Isa 11:5 says, “And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins.”What does God’s faithfulness entail here? Always being there, never leaving or forsaking us, are a “yes.” How about this one, “faithful is He who has called you, who also will do it?” 2 Thessalonians 5:24. Job 23:14 says “He will perform the thing that concerns us.” Well this is great news. I guess it means that God will show up in times of need and help.

Yes it does, but more. How about times where there is no particular trouble? How is God faithful in these times? Answer: same way, by showing up and performing the thing concerning us. So what are we getting at? Well, God holds our soul in life, and performs our best interest for us, with or without our involvement at all times. What? Yes, God faithfully does our calling and the thing concerning us, and we are involved in a certain way, but by no means are we going it alone. Otherwise faithfulness is not faithful.

What is that way of our involvement? It is the way of the “cross,” period. “Oh, cross is negative!” people say. No, Cross is the only way, and never negative! Cross is positive, and the enemy tries to destroy it’s image and meaning, because it destroyed his works. Cross is the way of escape. Here’s what I mean. 

Dead people have no expectation. I spoke at a funeral for a friend recently, Amazingly he did not ask for any advise, going forward. He didn’t seem to care about what will happen in the future. See, if we want to know what the cross means for us, we only need to visualize ourselves as that dead man, and then evaluate what we would do in any situation. In most cases, ha ha ha, we would do nothing, nor care about anything, nor fret over something we can’t do. 

This degree of non-involvement astounds us, and makes us doubt if we are doing this thing right. This is precisely my point. God works to get you and me into a place where we are finally letting certain chips fall their own way, and trusting God to orchestrate things in that realm, all by Himself. Sometimes He uses us for the orchestration, but often He works it out without us.

This is hard for us, starting out, because now we feel we have to figure out what to do in the new realm, and the things we have done here, we have only done for short time frames prior, maybe. Yes, the key to letting the other sphere go is to find our way in the post-cross sphere, forgetting about the other in the process.

This mandates proving the will of God. This is fun, but I must admit, it was not till God had neutralized my influence in the pre-cross world, that I experimented in the post cross arena. You can start this moment. 

Creativity must enter here, as our back is to the wall. Little things, we start out with, and finding God in them, we enjoy their freshness. We have no big dreams for these things, but we allow God to encourage us in them. We may have to battle with the great emotions, fighting against us that this is a waste of time.

Maybe we can’t help going back to the big serious stuff, but, when God ordains this as our time of love, the big serious stuff has no fruition. In contrast, these little times of creative awakenings, ticket our staying dead and resurrected. We learn how to fix a jammed door, or start a healthy diet, or maintain a nagging colostomy appliance, or pray a little prayer for a neighbor, or learn about how to have love for unlovely people. We learn a way to have fun giving cups of cold water, without endangering ourselves by excess, and discover new gifts and talents. Mostly, we learn how to walk and talk with a living loving friend, Our God and Savior, Jesus Christ.

The new relationship, at this time, maybe is a courtship, and we learn to enjoy the precious give and take. We have taken care of others vineyards and now God is going to care for ours. He dotes upon us and we get to know his gentleness. He treats us as a friend, develops us, and we learn to run in the sphere of His nurturing love.

Finally, we take this love sphere with us wherever we go and now there is no striving and straining. We don’t let a big pre-cross expectation cloud our ability to love the one soul, right now. Last point, all of this happens because of the faithfulness of God. Amen