Are you? Am I? I wish I could say since I gave my life to Christ at age 12 I have always been faithful, but sadly there have been times where I have not. Faithful is a word that carries great responsibility, commitment, and loyalty along with it. I have failed my Lord many times and if not for His patience, grace, mercy, and given me another chance I wouldn't probably be in ministry let alone a christian at this point in my life.
We can say many things about God, but one this is His is "Faithful"! He never leaves us, lets us down, breaks promises, or walks out on us. Many people have experience the pain, heartache, and hurt of earthly relationships where someone like a parent, or spouse should have been faithful to us, but instead we were left with broken trust, promises, and hearts.
I have also found in my years in ministry and personal faith that I see a trend in our churches today that makes me sad and that is a lack of true "Faithful" followers of Christ. We have a lot of people who claim Christ, or membership in His church, but we have fewer and fewer who are truly committed, loyal, and faithful to God and His church. This trend needs to change and it will only change when me and you get dead serious about our Faith.
The sad part is we carry on our lack of faithfulness to our children, family, and friends. We make Christianity look like it's optional, or an elective, if we don't have other or better things to do. We teach our children commitment to sports, competition, and team and yet we teach them faith is optional and secondary. We teach others we don't care to skip church or involvement or serve consistently because it interferes with our hobbies or social lives. Do you see how easy it is for this type of lack of faithfulness to the Lord to domino affect?
Instead we need to set the example and standard of faithfulness in our lives to God. Our spouses, families, children, friends, neighbors, co-workers, employeers, and coaches should all know that God is number one in my life and all else is secondary.. I am not just talking about church service attendance, I am talking about overall christianity. How faithful are we in sharing our faith? Reading or studying God's Word? Daily prayer? Serving? Helping Others? Personal Worship? There are many things we can be doing to grow our personal faith besides just attending church services, however, the local church is an extension of our faith, and if we are a Christian, we should be connected to a local church body, and be a "FAITHFUL" body part serving, giving, worshipping, on that local church body.
We ALL need to do some soul searching and honest evaluations of our lives and see how serious and "FAITHFUL" we are being to our Lord, God, and Savior. We surely want his Faithfulness to us. We want the benefits of His Salvation, Grace, Mercy, Peace, Comfort, Hope, Assurance, and Love, yet how many of us would be faithful to someone who used us, neglected us, or only wanted us when it benefited them or was convenient? I don't know anyone who would want in a relationship like that.
It is easy to give our lives to the Lord and be saved and baptized. It is a free Gift from God, however being faithful to God and making an effort to grow and mature into a fully devoted Christ follower is a lot of work, commitment, and we have to work at it. We will make mistakes, fall short, sin, and have a bad day here and there, but we all know there is a big difference in being Faithful to something and being fair-weather.
I want to encourage you to be faithful to God and His church daily. Recently we buried a lady from our church who was a true faithful follower. She came to church when most people would have used it an an excuse to stay home and many miss church for much less. She was faithful in her prayers and reading of God's word and it reflected in her life, attitude, and actions. She inspired me. She also convicted me, because even as a Preacher, I don''t feel I was as faithful as this dear Saint.
I pray we all can find a desire, a will, and motivation to be faithful til the end in our relationship with God. Be faithful to Him, His Word, and His church.
Hebrews 10:23(NIV)
Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful
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