Event: Call to Prayer 2021
God is faithful and can be trusted
If we are faithless, he remains faithful— for he cannot deny himself. 2 Timothy 2:13
This is the last but one devotion of the Call to Prayer this year, and we pray that it has been a blessing as we have looked together at some of the characteristics of God. Though we live in a world that is so uncertain and full of sin, we can draw great comfort in knowing that we depend on God who is Creator and sustains all things, is incomparable and holy, can be known, is perfect and will judge, and is love. Today we will be looking at His faithfulness.
One of the things that characterises our age is a lack of ‘brand-loyalty’. Years ago your bank would have been your bank for life, you would shop in the same shops, and you could never imagine swapping a doctor, dentist, or garage. But these days things are different, as we can shop around to our heart’s content. The internet is full of comparison websites where we can look for the best deal and surf from shop to shop with the click of a button or the scroll of a mouse. We do not need to stick with the same brand anymore, and the choices are endless.
I am not drawing your attention to this fact to make a point that things used to be better in the good old days! There are many positive things about being able to shop around and having freedom to look for the best price or a more complete service. But living in a society like ours should make us marvel at God’s brand-loyalty. God is faithful and true in every way.
In this verse Paul is drawing Timothy’s attention to this very fact. God is faithful in every way and He is faithful to us – this should blow our minds and our hearts. Even the most loyal of us would move away from a shop or service if we’d had a bad experience. We’d feel entitled to say ‘I’m not giving them my money if they treat me like that!’ or ‘I’m, not wasting my money on them again!’ Yet God is loyal to us though we constantly let Him down in thought, word, and deed. To be honest ‘let him down’ is not strong enough for the way we’ve treated our Creator. As a humanity we take His good gifts yet deny His lordship on our lives, we have rebelled, made a mess of creation, and worst of all we murdered His only Son. Yet, He remains loyal, offering full forgiveness to us through faith in Christ.
Even as Christians we fail God in so many ways, yet He remains faithful. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1, ‘(He) will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord’. He is faithful and will not let us be tempted beyond our ability (1 Corinthians 10:13), and when we confess our sins, ‘he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness’ (1 John 1:9).
His loyalty to the human brand defies all logic, yet it makes perfect sense when we move away from looking at our failings, to looking at His awesome character. He is faithful because He is faithful! This is who He is, and we would do well to remember this at times when we struggle to understand what is going on. Oh how we need to hold on to this truth in these days – He is all that we need!
We can hope in God because He is faithful.
Questions
- At what times are you tempted to doubt God’s faithfulness? Is this fair?
- Think back to past experiences that prove God would never let you go.
Further reading
- Psalm 33
- Hebrews 11
Pray
- Thank the Lord for all the ways He has been faithful to you.
- Pray that the Lord would keep you in times of difficulty and doubt.
- Pray that the Church would learn to depend fully on God in our days.
- Pray that the Lord would forgive our country for turning our back on Him.