Our Faithful God

When was the last time you stopped to consider the faithfulness of God in your life? Just think back upon the past few weeks or months or years; or decades even. If you zoom out and refocus, can't you see the faithful hand of God working through the providences of your life?

Whenever I walk through a mental and spiritual exercise like this, I'm forced to praise God for His goodness to me in giving me so much more than I deserve. My salvation alone – God's free grace demonstrated through the sacrifice of His own Son on behalf of a wretch like me – is enough to cause me to praise God for eternity. And indeed I will! Still He's given me temporal blessings beyond this eternal blessing: health, civil freedom, education, financial stability, a beautiful wife, a biblical church, friends and family, a house, means of transportation, and countless other mercies in this life.

All along the way throughout my short life, I can see the hand of a faithful God working in and guiding my life. Proverbs 16:9 tells us that this is exactly how God operates:

"The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps."

Even in the times where I didn't know what God was doing, I could never doubt His faithfulness. One Puritan pastor, Edward Pearce, wrote this encouraging thought for the Christian:

“Poor soul, whoever you are, who are one of the Lord’s people, look back to the eternal counsels and purposes of His love towards you, and you will find them a great deep, a fountain of infinite sweetness. In them you will see heaps of love and treasures of grace; and then turn your eye to the promises of His covenant, which you will find inexpressibly sweet and exactly suitable to your condition, to all your wants, and then know assuredly that the whole, both of the one and the other, shall be accomplished to you in due season. It is true indeed, His counsels may seem to us to be frustrated, and His promises may for a time be deferred and delayed, insomuch that our hasty unbelieving hearts may be ready to conclude that they will never be accomplished, saying with the psalmist, “Does his promise fail for evermore?” (Psa 77:8). But, soul, wait a while, and they shall all be made good to a tittle.”

Indeed, it's easy to become impatient when God's blessings are deferred, delayed, or altogether withheld. But all that God has promised will come to pass. He is faithful to His Word.

A year ago this week Paige and I were visiting with some friends who, like us, have struggled with conceiving. My friend, the husband, reminded us of something very important, and it’s this: Just as we know that all that God promises will come to pass, we need to likewise acknowledge that if God hasn’t explicitly promised it, then we have no room for certainty in it nor right to claim it as our own. And the gift of childbearing is just one example of this. God has promised us many things in Christ His Son, but we should not presume upon His grace and expect that which He has not promised us.

This has been helpful for us to remember as we think about out situation. God hasn't promised us children, therefore we shouldn't expect Him to grant that blessing to us. Instead, we need to recognize that He has already given us everything we need right now.

The Psalmist put it like this:

“The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.” Psalm 34:10

The Puritan Thomas Watson said it like this:

"If it is good for us, we shall have it; if it is not good for us, then the withholding of it is good." (All Things For Good)

And what about the assurance given to us by the Holy Spirit through the Apostle Peter in 2 Peter 1:3–

"His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness..." 

So for those of us who have been bought by the blood of Jesus, God is telling us that according to Him, we already have all that we need for today, all we need for right now, for both this life and for eternity. If we think there are blessings that God owes us, something that maybe He's forgotten to give us, or painful circumstances that He should be taking away from us, then we're just wrong. God doesn't owe us a thing; and yet He's already given us all that we need in Christ Jesus!

“Therefore let those who suffer according to God's will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.” 1 Peter 4:19

~ David