“No one who believes in Jesus will be put to
shame.”
— Romans 10:11 (NRSV)
How beautiful it is to consider
the faithfulness of God.
We see it in others’ lives, as we
see it in our own. The longer we travel
the journey of life, and the more we trust in a simple obedience, the more the
capacities of our trust grow, and peace becomes us. From there faith is easier, but our assurance
is buoyed by a calm humility to keep things simple, not getting ahead of
ourselves.
He who was faithful—and, I mean,
the eternal “was,” i.e. was always—remains faithful. He who
is faithful, and has promised to bless our obedience, does not allow our faith
to be put to shame. For, honouring the
truth has become our passion when our obedience has met the foreseeable standards
of God’s will.
The beauty in honouring the truth—in
trusting—is that there is nothing to fear having approached such a thing. As we boldly though humbly honour the truth,
living our faith with virtuous abandon, we delight in joy to observe the will
of God.
Simply put, God’s faithfulness is
to be seen
everywhere.
It might even be seen by the
results that the worldly may consider not a blessing at all. Imagine seeing the faithfulness of the Lord in everything, disregarding
personal benefit or detriment (for blessing may come ultimately from
misfortune). That is a halcyon of faith—to
trust beyond evidence of blessing.
Observing History As a Means of
Confidence for the Future
Wherever we need to draw hope we
do no better than to consider God’s eternal faithfulness throughout our pasts,
and throughout the pasts of others—especially those we call the heroes of faith.
What a gift it is to have the
blessing of hindsight; the gorgeously outrageous legacy of the past where we
have been touched by the
hand of God. These are amazing realities
to consider; too amazing, really, for appropriate comprehension.
How is it that such a pure and
holy God would prove so faithful?
Perhaps it is no irony at all that
we notice God’s faithfulness all the more when we trust him. God
is faithful in many ways even when we don’t trust him, but we don’t notice it,
because we are consumed in the self.
But the gorgeousness of trust is a
delight to God, such as it is so that he blesses us with sight and reason for
praise.
***
There is nothing so gorgeous in
life than the faithfulness of God, and, when we join divine faithfulness with
faith to trust, we see not only blessing, we have reason to praise. God is
faithful; the Lord fulfils his
promises; we who trust will not be put to shame.
© 2013 S. J. Wickham.
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