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Fruit of the Spirit: Faithfulness

Over the last several weeks, you have been reading about the fruit of the Spirit from Galatians 5:22–23, and this week’s fruit is faithfulness.

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

When I began thinking about the word faithfulness and what it means, the song, “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” kept coming to mind.

 

Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father,

There is no shadow of turning with Thee;

Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not

As Thou hast been Thou forever wilt be.


Great is Thy faithfulness! Great is Thy faithfulness!

Morning by morning new mercies I see;

All I have needed Thy hand hath provided—

Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!


Summer and winter, and springtime and harvest,

Sun, moon and stars in their courses above,

Join with all nature in manifold witness

To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.


Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth,

Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide;

Strength for today and bright home for tomorrow,

Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside!

 

So what does this song say faithfulness is? It’s unchanging, unfailing compassion, new mercies each day, provision for needs, pardon for sin and peace that endures, constant presence and guidance, strength, brightness, and blessings with community.  This song also shows that faith is ultimately from God. We are unable to produce it; we receive it as a gift, so that we may have life with Him. Thankfully, this is something that we can receive from God and have grown in us.

In high school and college, my understanding of faithfulness was based on me. I viewed faithfulness not through the lens of God’s faithfulness, but on how faithful I could be.  Faithfulness was based on experiences with people, having a “long” quiet time, how much I prayed or attended church activities. These are all good things to do, but just doing them to have done them is not faithfulness. This was my own self-righteousness, not faithfulness to Jesus’ righteousness. After college my alone time with God looked different; work, marriage, and children changed what my time allowed, but more importantly my definition of faithfulness changed as well.

Faithfulness has become more about God’s ability to be faithful than my own. And as I looked up the definition of this word, it became clear that we are not even able to produce this fruit; it is truly a gift from God. The word “faith” in Greek is pistis – which means to be persuaded, or come to trust.  As I meditated on that more and more, it made sense. If we were unable to chose God, how would we expect to have faith, even as small as a mustard seed to pursue Him?

I have seen faith grow in me through writing lessons for our children at Grace. As I spend time with passages of Scripture preparing lessons, I continue to see more of God’s faithfulness.  Over and over again God pursues us with perfect, longsuffering faithfulness even as we continue to be a shortsighted and faithless people.  I often judged God’s people in the Bible more harshly than I judged myself. But as I have seen God’s complete pursuit and relentless faithfulness, I see I am no different then the Israelites waiting in the desert or pursuing idols in the promised land.  Our faithfulness is simply a gift, a fruit of the Holy Spirit. As we are drawn closer to Christ, our faithfulness increases, not as a result of anything we have done, but as a result of our closeness to the Creator of faith.

In Him,

Cara

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