Adam Mabry

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Prayer & Fasting, Day 12: God is Faithful

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, (Deuteronomy 7:9). The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he. (Deuteronomy 32:4).

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
 (Hebrews 13:8).

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. (James 1:17).

Have you ever had someone make a promise to you, then break it? It’s an awful feeling. Yet, our world abounds with broken promises. The promise to love and be faithful to a spouse is soon broken by the gaze of another. The promise to be there for someone is broken by another commitment. The promise from our leaders to be honest and transparent is broken by back room deals, lies, and coverups. It’s no wonder, then, that we have a hard time believing that God is any different.

The God we meet in the Scriptures is, thankfully, very different. God never wakes up on the wrong side of the bed. God never flip flops. God never covers up the truth. God always, only, ever does what he says he is going to do. In short, God is faithful.

The root of faithlessness in our culture has borne the fruit of cynicism—the refusal to believe anything. Inside many of us, we carry around the belief that we really can’t trust anyone, including God. But God is worthy of our trust, precisely because God is in no way like us. We read that God “keeps his covenants.” There is not one promise that God has made which he has not kept. Not one forecast that did not come to pass. We aren’t like that at all.

We also read that all God’s ways are justice. Nothing that God brings about is ever wrong, unjust, or in any way to be called into question. In fact, every good and noble thing that you and I can imagine are proofs of this fact. God has bestowed countless blessings on us. James, the half-brother of Jesus, reminds us that with God “there is no shadow due to change.” God is never turning himself to keep his less beautiful parts hidden from us. He’s never putting on a facade. No, he is always faithful, giving good and perfect gifts to a humanity that largely does not deserve them.

Chiefest among these gifts, however, is the gift of himself. The greatest promise that God has ever kept is the promise to rescue his people from their sins. His mightiest demonstration of his faithfulness was in his gift of Jesus Christ to us. No one at the time expected God to come in flesh! The best guesses were for a king or military leader. Jesus was way above and beyond what anyone could have imagined. This should show us something about the character of God—namely, that though we cannot understand or predict how God will carry out his promises, we may always trust that he will carry out his promises. This fact should make us immensely grateful that the God we serve is a God who will always be faithful. Therefore, he is always worthy of trust.

Today, you may not understand how God is achieving his promises. But before you doubt him, remember that your inability to understand God’s ways does not prove him unfaithful. It only proves him God, and you merely human. Trust him today. He is worth it.