The Faithfulness Of God Even In Hard Times

 

The Lord is faithful to all His promises and loving toward all He has made. The Lord upholds all those who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down.

 

Psalm 145:13b-14

Have you ever had a relationship with someone who was faithful?

 

You knew you could depend on that person completely and totally no matter what, regardless of the level of involvement that you contributed. You learned that they truly meant what they said and did—completely faithful.

 

God is that and so much more. In fact, He is faithful to fulfill every promise in His Word. Sometimes we think God isn't faithful because it appears He has not fulfilled a desire that we have. Sometimes we think He is not faithful because of hard times that seem to say Hr isn't faithful.

The Bible is full of accounts of God's faithfulness that was often accompanied by hard times:

 

• He brought Joseph out of slavery to be greatly used in a nation.
• He delivered the people from Egypt and brought them into the Promised Land.
• He delivered David from his enemies and made him a king.

In story upon story, we learn of God's faithfulness.

God is faithful in all seasons and most of all during our hard times. Take an inventory of your life and ask God if you have been faithful with what He has entrusted to you—physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and financially.

 

Right before our eyes we see God's faithfulness come through, especially in our greatest weakness—trust Him with all areas of your life and be prepared for great things!

Reflecting

 

They will tell of the glory of Your kingdom and speak of Your might, so that all men may know of Your mighty acts and the glorious splendor of Your kingdom.

 

Psalm 145:11-12

How do you measure your effectiveness in God, or should we even be thinking like this?

 

The early Church turned the world upside down in the first century, but what made them so effective?

 

Was it their theology?

 

Was it great preaching?

 

Was it great outpouring?

 

Was it great worship?

The Scriptures are clear as to what made the early Church effective, which is at the core of God's heart, and it is quite simple—God desires to reflect His nature and power through every individual. When this happens, the world is automatically changed because those who reflect His glory affect the world.

We serve a jealous God and He is a God who will not share His glory with anyone. God demonstrate His power through us and this is something He has done this since the day He created man. His desire is to reflect His glory through us, so that all may know of His mighty acts and the glorious splendor of His Kingdom.

The apostle Paul understood this principle: "My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power" (1 Corinthians 2:4-5).

If you do not see His glory being reflected through your life, then you need to ask why. He has promised to do so if we will walk in obedience to His ways through the leading of the Spirit.

 

Waiting On God

Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; He rises to show you compassion. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for Him!

 

Isaiah 30:18

Have you ever noticed that God is not in a hurry?

 

It took 40 years for Moses to receive his commission to lead the people out of Egypt.

It took 17 years of preparation before Joseph was delivered from slavery and imprisonment.

It took 20 years before Jacob was released from Laban's control.

It took many years before Abraham and Sarah when finally received the son of promise, Isaac.

 

So why isn't God in a hurry?

God called each of these individuals to accomplish a certain task in His Kingdom, yet He was in no hurry to bring their mission into fulfillment.

 

We must first notice that, God accomplished what He wanted in them. We are often more focused on outcome than the process that He is accomplishing in our lives each day. When we experience His presence daily, one day we wake up and realize that God has done something special in and through our lives.

 

However, the accomplishment is no longer what excites us.

 

Instead, what excites us is knowing Him.

 

Through those times, we become more acquainted with His love, grace, and power in our lives. When this happens, we are no longer focused on the outcome because the outcome is a result of our walk with Him.

 

It is not the goal of our walk, but the by-product.

 

Hence, when Joseph came to power in Egypt, he probably couldn't have cared less. He had come to a place of complete surrender so that he was not anxious about tomorrow or his

circumstances.

This is the lesson for us.

 

We must wait for God's timing and embrace wherever we are in the process. When we find contentment in that place, we begin to experience God in ways we never thought possible.

Work Up A Soul Sweat

Train yourself in godliness

 

1Timothy 4:7

 

 

If the gym is a training ground for physical discipline, then perhaps you can learn something from it about training your soul. The word translated discipline in the Bible actually comes from the Greek gymnaze, meaning to train or discipline. From it we get the word gymnasium. The apostle Paul, a spiritual gym rat if ever there was one, instructed Timothy, "Train yourself in godliness" (1Timothy 4:7).

 

Do Cardio Work First

How do you work up a good soul sweat?

 

We first have to deal with the heart of the matter, in the gym and in soul matters—cardiovascular training is a vital aspect of a physical workout. Keeping the heart strong enables the vitality of the other organs and gives strength to work the rest of the body.

 

We must be wary of natural heart disease; even the redeemed heart has an inclination toward sin. Our hearts need to be strengthened by grace and this discipline requires looking inward. The Pharisees looked on the outward; they can be categorized as those in the gym who are looking in the mirror all the time. But spiritual health is not about how you look religiously, but about how freely—and thus powerfully—we allow God to flow through you. Christ can't flow through us into the world if our heart is clogged with spiritual plaque.

 

We get our heart in good condition by examining the heart of God in contrast to our own. This requires that we know the heart of God but also that we acknowledge that our own hearts are unfit. To get at the core of it is to understand who God is and to understand the depths of our own need.

 

It is a similar approach to how people who handle large sums of cash learn to spot counterfeit money—by intensely observing the real thing. We must learn about the heart of God in order to understand how to help our heart get into shape.

 

And how do we know when a change is taking place?

 

None other than the spiritual "treadmill test" for the heart is the fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22).

 

Strengthen The Core

Any athlete will tell us that the core (abs and back) is the ultimate source of strength. The core of spiritual discipline is the Word of God—Scripture alone is our fitness training manual.

 

We are able to maintain sold workouts and change up our routines from time to time as we gain instruction and wisdom from the fitness training manual—the Word of God.

 

Repetition is important to a physical workout. Equally, repetitious review of Scriptures will burn them into our mind and give us a sound core from which to live out the rest of the spiritual disciplines.

 

Strive for a Balanced Workout

Balance is vital to a good workout.

 

Imagine a man leaving the gym with remarkably large biceps. He can do single bicep curls with 50 lb free weights, but his stomach is fat, his legs spindly, and he huffs and puffs just trying to walk to his car. He would be a physical freak, an unbalanced man who had done nothing in the gym but work his biceps.

 

Consider the greatest spiritual influencers we have known, the people who reflected Christ the most. Although they possessed individual strengths, they were not one-dimensional.

 

As we consider a spiritual workout, give attention to a variety of areas: Bible study, life application, prayer, worship, evangelism and service, stewardship of time and money, silence and solitude, and journaling.

 

Our purpose in exercising our soul is not to live feeling better about ourselves—though that may be an acceptable by-product. Our purpose is to live stronger, more fit, and wonderfully conditioned to go into the world and do the work God has called us to.

Inner Healing

Then Jesus said, "Come to me all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you because I am humble and gentle, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke fits perfectly and the burden I give you is light"

Matthew 11:28-29

 

Because God is gentle and long-suffering He will allow us to get to a point where we recognize that the burdens we are carrying are too heavy for us and that we can no longer try to carry them on our own because our lives are being crushed beneath the load. He patiently waits for us to call out to Him for help.

How long will it take?

God knows the season, the time, and the circumstance that will get us to this place where we recognize our need and allow Him to pick up the pieces and restore us into the men and women that He has designed and created us to be.

We are all born with imperfections and this is apart of the consequences of living in a fallen world, which begin to affect us even before we are born. God can heal anything, but He often uses our weaknesses to develop our trust and reliance upon Him as well as our character.

The need for medication is not a sign of failure or a lack of faith, as some may think. Ever since Adam and Eve fell, there have been defects in humans. For example, when you get an inner ear infection you will take the proper precautions and care for the ear in order for it to get better—complete inner healing. And at times along with the body amazingly working to bring restoration to itself, medication is need it so that the ear is fully restored.

God works healing in us as long as we surrender to Him in obedience and stop complicating our lives with the consequences of additional sin. In His grace and mercy, God speaks tenderly to our hearts and develops a Christ-like character in us. And it is through His death, burial and resurrection that we are set free from sin and able to enjoy restored fellowship near the Father's heart.

We see in Romans 8:29 that we are to becoming more Christ-like—in our thoughts, feelings, motives, and actions. This will take willingness and effort on our part, coupled with the abiding power of the Holy Spirit to strengthen us along the way. And don't forget that …in an abundance of counselors there is victory and safety (Proverbs 24:6). So be open and humble enough to ask specialists in various fields for help. And most importantly, ask the Holy Spirit to guide you to the right help at the right time to arrive at inner healing.

Waiting For The Lord

Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.

 

Psalm 27:14

Hearing and doing God's will are two important steps that often get confused as one step—these are two distinct processes. When we hear God's voice, this is only half of the process. The next important step is to know when to move. It is one thing to hear; it is another to know when to act.

There was a time when God showed a man that he was to write. This was a major change in his life from what he was doing. As he began to write, he enjoyed it even though at times he just rather not even begin to put his words down on paper.  

Finally, one day he decided to write for the purpose of publishing his writings and thus he begin to write and write. Then he realized he would need to find a publisher to publish his writings. Now this was a frustrating task and he became irritated by all the delays he began to experience.

 

Then a good friend asked one day, "How is the writing coming along and have you found a publisher yet?"

"No," was the reply.

The friend went on to say that, "When you complete the book, God will provide a publisher if He has called you to write the book and it is to be published, but you need to complete the task that He has called you to before stepping ahead."

A few months later the man was in a discussion with a publisher about his work and had set up a time to meet in order to discuss the publishing of his book. The day they met they offered him a contract on his book, which happened to also be the exact day that he had completed the book.

God is always on time and He is never late, and He is seldom early… ask God for the wisdom to discern His will and His timing for the events of the journey ahead.

 

And here is a true story that makes clear that all things are best left in God's timing regardless of what has been spoken or what we envision is on the horizon:

 

Corrie ten Boom was a prisoner in the German Holocaust who lost her sister in the concentration camps; and she tells a story about her father taking her on trains. She always wanted to get the ticket from her father ahead of time. He never gave her the ticket until she was about to get onto the train—the same goes for us as God's timing is best in all manners of our lives.

Desperation

Now Nahash the Ammonite came up and besieged Jabesh-gilead; and all the men of Jabesh said to Nahash, "Make a covenant with us and we will serve you." But Nahash the Ammonite said to them, "I will make it with you on this condition, that I will gouge out the right eye of every one of you, thus I will make it a reproach on all Israel.

 

1 Samuel 11:1-2

 

 

 

Nahash was simply toying with the Israelites emotions. He knew they were desperate, confused and disorganized and thus offered this ridiculous ultimatum—"I will make a deal with you on one condition; you will allow me to gouge out the right eye of every man." It was an outlandish and unreasonable proposal, but it was accepted by the elders of the city—leaders who were looked upon as tutors of wisdom—yet here collapsed under the pressures of desperation. From their perspective, their options had run dry.

 

They were desperate people living in desperate times, making desperate decisions.

Desperation often occurs when we feel as if we've run out of options—when we find ourselves painted into that proverbial corner with no way out. Under such circumstances even the most ridiculous can sound reasonable.

Desperate times often demand desperate decisions and at times decisions that are unwise, which can risk the lives and safety of others, especially if decisions are based on circumstances of the moment and give no thought to the future.

 

We need to make sure that we avoid this vortex of desperation in all areas of our life.

 

When life seems to lead to nowhere but a dead end, desperation has a tendency to pull us into its downward spiral of confusion if we let it. Decisions that we must make for life cannot be made in desperation. If desperation breeds where options have gone dry, then we must, in all our decisions never stop seeking options and consider all viable alternatives that will allow us to achieve the godly goals for what God has in store. We cannot afford to allow ourselves to resign to the perception that our options have run out, otherwise we become open game to the enemy who will toy with our emotions, as Nahash did with the Israelites, and we will soon find ourselves agreeing to the ridiculous, rather than the reasonable.