God Wants Your Faithfulness

One of the most important things to know about God is that He never asks you to do something that He doesn't do Himself. And 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... Deut. 7:9 ESV

For I am the LORD, I do not change. Mal. 3:6 NKJV

God is not a man, that He should lie... Num. 23:19

God is pure truth. Therefore, He cannot change, cannot lie, and cannot deviate from His word. God is then, pure faithfulness. If He says something, He will accomplish it, and He will stand by it for eternity.

Another important thing to understand about God, is that He will never ask you to do something that you cannot do. And God will always provide a human example that we can look at, and learn from, for any characteristic that He wants us to have and to exercise.

God's greatest human character of faith is a guy named Abraham. In fact, Abraham is considered to be the founding father of faith for the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religions.

Abraham is a tenth generational descendant of Noah's.

When he is seventy-five years old, God tells him to pack up his wife, his nephew and a few servants and take a fifteen hundred mile trek away from his family, and the only home that he's ever known, to live in a land that he's never been to.

God promises Abraham that if he does that, He will bless him by making a great nation out of the seed of his loins and that everyone else on the earth will be blessed as well.

Abraham doesn't hesitate. He pulls up stakes and departs. Why? It's because he believes in God's promises. He is exercising his faith.

God only expects our best efforts. He does not demand perfection. And many times, it is amusing to look at the human side of His characters that He holds up to us for examples.

Abraham and his retinue make it to this new land, (Canaan, which is modern-day Israel) but it has been struck by famine. So they journey to Egypt to seek food. While there, Abraham lets fear creep over his faith in God's Divine protection, and he lies to the Pharaoh of Egypt - telling him that his wife (Sarah) is really his sister.

Sarah was looking pretty hot, and Abraham was afraid that Pharaoh would kill him and keep his wife for himself. Pharaoh doesn't kill Abraham but he does pursue his 'sister.'

God reveals Sarah's true identity to Pharaoh, and then He warns him of dire consequences if he continues in his pursuit. Pharaoh promptly ships Abraham and company back to Canaan.

The reason for this little side-trip was to show you that if the greatest example of faith can mess up, so can we. And we will slip in our faith from time to time. So instead of beating and berating ourselves up when our humanness pops out, (which actually separates us from the love of God) we can return to God for forgiveness and then ask for the strength to step back into faith. God always delivers...

Getting back to Abraham, God blesses him with wealth, and a miraculous military victory.

God then promises Abraham that He will be his defender, protector, and Divine Benefactor. And a third and extremely important thing to know about God, is that what He promises to one of His children, He promises to all. But, in order to inherit any of God's promises, you must have faith:

And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. Heb. 11:6 ESV

And many times, faith requires patience.

Abraham's patience was wearing a little then, when in his early eighties, he reminds God of His promise of offspring. God reassures him that his descendants will be innumerable. Abraham believed, and God equated that as being righteousness in his behavior. So we can also see that faith is required to be in 'right standing' with God.

Abraham's son is born when he is one hundred years old. And Abraham was patiently faithful until that time. God always keeps His word. Sometimes His timing doesn't match our expectations, but His timing is always perfect.

Sometimes God tests our faith as well - because there is no faith where there is no resolve. He tested Abraham by telling him to go sacrifice his son. And heart-wrenchingly, he went to do it, but he kept faith in the belief that God would intervene at the last moment in some miraculous way.

Abraham's faith paid off. And because of his faith, the entire world was blessed. Abraham died as the ripe old age of one hundred seventy-five, he was wealthy, his children would populate the entire planet, and his good name would stand as a paragon of faith for all time.

Your faith will keep you in right standing with God. Your faith will give you the courage to answer when He calls. Whatever task He might ask of you will surely bring a blessing. Even your descendants will be blessed by your faith.

Faith keeps God at your side at all times. You can accomplish anything. If you lose a little of it, acknowledge that to God. He will give it back to you in even greater measures. In times of testing, ask for His strength. He's a giver...

The only way to God is through faith. So how do you get some?

So faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Rom. 10:17 NKJV

Keep an open ear. You too can be an Abraham.

Supporting scripture: Gen. 12:1-3, 15:1 & 6, 22:18; Ps. 121:7; Heb. 11:8 - 12.