The Reassuring Quality of Faithfulness

Sooner or later, each of us must face the reality that in our own strength we don’t measure up—we’ve all sinned and fallen short most every day of our lives. But the good news is God’s faithfulness to us has never depended on our perfection. In this message, Dr. Stanley explores four ways we experience God’s fidelity in keeping His promises to His children. Relax into the trustworthy character of our heavenly Father—He will never leave or forsake you. For more messages from Charles Stanley, including this week’s broadcast, go to www.intouch.org/watch

God’s Messages

Dear Lord,
Today…….I am asking all my prayer warriors to say a prayer that may help others. So many people are hurting right now. Many are struggling with finances and need jobs. Some are facing foreclosure and don’t even know how they are going to make it from week to week..

Many are lonely. . Many are heartbroken. . Many are facing sickness and health is fading. . Some are dealing with difficult family members. Many have lost HOPE.. Tonight, let us put our prayers and faith together decree and declare breakthrough over our families. Financial miracles WILL take place. Jobs WILL be found. Our Bodies WILL be made whole & sickness WILL flee. Marriages and relationships WILL be restored. Family members WILL find Jesus. Heartbreaks WILL be healed. JOY WILL be restored and HOPE WILL be found. In Jesus Name. Amen!!!!!! Keep God First…….

Faithfulness is one of the most important qualities to be found in our life.
And when you think about what that involves, sometimes we have believed in people and had faith in them and they’ve disappointed us, they tell us one thing and do something differently.
And then there are people who go through very difficult times in life, hard times, they’re betrayed often times or live with big debts or whatever it might be because of somebody’s unfaithfulness, lack of faithfulness.
And so it’s a very important quality.
And I would ask you, would you be, would you fit the category of somebody who’s faithful when you say you’ll do something, you do it when you say who you are, that’s who you really are or do you take that lightly?
God doesn’t say it lightly. So I want to title this message, the reassuring quality of faithfulness.
And when I think about that, I think about this passage in Genesis in the 32nd chapter.
So just listen to it a moment in verse nine, Jacob said, oh God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac.
Oh Lord, who said to me, return to your country and to your relatives and I will prosper you.
I am unworthy of all the loving kindness and of all the faithfulness which you have shown to your servant.
And just his way of expressing His gratitude to an Almighty God.
Would you say that you are a grateful person that uh you look around in your life and you see how faithful God has been and that you are grateful and that you are grateful because of His faithfulness.
To so throughout scripture, there’s a whole bunch of verses about His faithfulness.
And I’d just like to read through a few of them just to remind you how important it is and deter on chapter seven verse nine.
Listen, know therefore that the Lord, your God, he is God, the faithful God.
One of his attributes is if He says He’ll do something, he’ll do it in Psalm 33 verse four.
For the word of the Lord is upright and all his work is done in faithfulness.
He does what he says. He’ll do faithful to his promises. Psalm 36 verse five, your loving kindness.
Oh Lord extends to the heavens. Your faithfulness reaches to the skies. Psalm 1 1990.
His faithfulness continues throughout all generations and lamentations. 3 23 great is your faithfulness then of course.
And when I think about that, I think about uh uh second Timo, the 2 13 listen, when we are unfaithful, he remains faithful.
Our sin does not nullify, run devoid, the faithfulness of God that is, we’re not faithful sometimes, but God always is you.
And I have never confessed our sin to Him. Genuinely. You were in it that He didn’t forgive us.
You can’t name a single promise that God has failed to keep. That’s who He is.
He’s a faithful God who keeps his promise in every circumstance of life.
So we say He keeps his promise, but also one of his other attributes is He’s, that is that God is immutable, that is He doesn’t change.
Everybody changes, we all change, but God never changes when He says, I will never leave you nor forsake you.
What does he mean? God says, I will not forsake you. I will not leave you.
Faithfulness is one of the attributes of God we rest upon so faithfulness that is being who we say we are doing, what we say we’ll do and making it a way of life is what God intended for every one of us.
Because to be unfaithful is to tell something that is not true or act out something that is not true.
So with that in mind, the Holy Spirit makes it part of his responsibility to guide us leaders and to enable us to be faithful in difficult, very difficult situations.
The Holy Spirit is faithful in expressing through us the qualities that are consistent with the nature of God.
That’s the way He always operates. He’s not going to work in us.
Something that is not true of God.
So when he sent the Holy Spirit, he sent the Holy Spirit because God knew you and I would not be capable of living a Christian life.
We’re not apart from the Holy Spirit.
You can’t, there’s not a single one of us who has the strength and the energy, the fortitude and the faithfulness to live the Christian life.
Apart from the indwelling Holy Spirit, he sent him.
And that’s why he said, sit down in the city of Jerusalem until you be indued with power from an eye.
You’re not ready to do what I’ve called you to do, which is to evangelize the world.
You’re not ready until the Holy Spirit who will live within you and enable you and equip you comes and anoints you for the power to do that.
So you’re, if you’re a, if you’re a believer, you’ve trusted Christ as your savior, you are sealed under the day of redemption as he says.
So you have the one in you who will enable you to be faithful in every circumstance of life.
When we are unfaithful. It’s the same Holy Spirit who lives within us who convicts us of sin.
So faithfulness is very important to God. Faithfulness is important to each other.
Faithfulness is important to ourselves that we have the quality.
If you can be trusted, that what you say you will do.
What happens when somebody makes a promise to you and they’re unfaithful. It grieves your spirit.
You, you feel something, in other words, they made you a promise.
I think about having husbands and wives, they’ve made promises to each other.
They live together faithfully all the days of their life and then one day they walk away.
So the truth is they made a promise they didn’t keep.
And that is a plague in the American society, a plague of divorce, a plague of separation, a plague of, of disloyalty, not faithfulness.
And so the Holy Spirit is equipped us.
So that’s why when I think of the Holy Spirit, I think of Him as God’s enabler, he has placed within us, the enabling power to do what we say we’ll do.
And so we have a helper. That’s what Jesus called Him, the helper, the Holy Spirit.
So let’s think about that for a moment and some very specific areas in which God has promised to be faithful to us every day.
And one of them is one of the most familiar ones.
And that is first John 19, you know it by heart, watch this, watch what he says.
If we confess we we are in agreement with God about something.
If we confess our sins that we’ve sinned against Him, he is faithful.
This, this is God’s part He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Why does he put that just business in there.
Because if God just says, ok, you’re forgiven, you’re forgiven, then forgiveness wouldn’t mean much faithful.
And just to forgive us, that is when Jesus went to the cross and paid our sin debt in full, it makes it possible legally with God that if we confess our sins, we agree with Him.
They did the wrong thing. He will always forgive us because He’s paid our sin debt in full.
He has the right to forgive us. And God being truthful and God being holy.
And if there were no pardon at the cross, then God wouldn’t be keeping His word.
But He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
That is God’s fateful promise to you.
It’s interesting to me that God made that verse so simple, so short, so clean, so easily understood that if I agree with Him that I’ve sinned against Him, I, I, I regret that He listens sees His He’s faithful.
We can trust Him that we are forgiven of our sins.
Now, how many times have you confess your sin to God and gotten up and walked away and thought God, I hope so.
Lord, I, I pray so. Lord, I’m not sure I’m not in, in other words, he says, God’s faithful.
Here’s what that means. What He says He’ll do. He will do now. Is that true of you?
Well, you have to answer that between you and God a second thing that is God’s faithfulness limits the power of our temptation.
Now, you remember in first Corinthians chapter 10 verse 13 and uh maybe you should, maybe we should turn to that one.
It’s one that we most all of us know by heart chapter 10 verse 13.
No temptation has overtaken you but such is common demand. God is what faithful.
Listen, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you’re able.
But with the temptation, we’ll provide the way of escape so that you can endure it.
That is when we’re tempted, we have the promise of Holy God that He puts a limitation on all of our temptation.
Some people are stronger than others. Some people just push overs for the devil.
Some people are stalwart, strong obedient, faithful, loyal servants of God. He says that here’s his promise.
He will not allow the devil to tempt you more than you are able to bear as you trust Him.
We’re talking about believers, the unbelievers, they, they don’t have any help. Listen to that.
No temptation has overtaken you. But such as his common demand that is there are all kind of temptations.
God is trustworthy. He’s faithful. He will not, he will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you’re able.
So therefore, the Bible says, God promises you don’t have to yield the temptation because Holy God has put a limitation on every temptation you face.
Now, you you say, well, God, if, if, if you had done this, I would, I wouldn’t have done.
No. God says I, I, here’s a promise I’ve made to you that I put a, I put a stop to the temptation.
It can only go so far. That’s a promise of God.
You believe God keeps his promises. Yes, you do. I’m sure you do.
So ask yourself the question when you attempted, do you fail? Do you yield that temptation?
And then say God, you know, I’m weak in that area. And so why did you let this happen?
That doesn’t work. It may work for you, but you just think it works for you because says, no, I put a limitation on it.
All of us have been tempted in lots of ways.
Anybody who says, well, I’ve never been tempted, just lied or somebody who says probably a lot of people would have to say I’m tempted daily.
The best thing to do if you face the same temptation every day is don’t go to the same place every day or if you go to the same place every day, watch what you watch, watch what you look at what watch, what gets your attention.
Lust is a major, major tool of the devil and lust is simply a strong desire to do something that is to think about something that is an act of disobedience to God.
God says I put a limitation on it, then he says in Philippians 47 and the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
That is, here’s his promise when you and I get anxious about things and you say, well, is anxiety a sin.
Well, I’ll put it this way.
We shouldn’t be anxious, but there are times when something hits us and all of a sudden we may feel anxiety, especially if it has to do with somebody we love and maybe they’re in trouble or something happened to them or sickness or whatever it might be.
So all of us are gonna hit those times in life when we feel anxious about things.
If you went to the doctor and he told you your heart was in bad shape, you’d probably get anxious and your, your heart would get in worse shape because of what he told you.
But there are times when we feel anxiety and there are times when we feel anxiety by watching somebody else do something that you know, is gonna be a disaster.
If they don’t stop. God has made a promise to us. He stands by every promise.
And that promise is that we can have the peace of God and notice what he said.
Watch this, which surpasses all understanding that is God says, I’m gonna give you a piece that you can’t understand the peace of God, which surpasses our comprehension.
And Paul is saying, you know, there are times and situations we don’t understand and, and we, we thank God.
Where were you? God? Here’s what you said. Here’s what your, your Bible says.
But look what you’re allowed to happen. God, what, what’s going on? Where were you when this happened?
Why did you allow her to do this and Him to do that?
Why do you allow my Children to, to get into these situations?
The peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension. Thank God for that verse. That’s some things we don’t understand.
Said some situations we think, well, God, if you loved it, you wouldn’t let that happen.
Lord, why did you let that happen to so and so why, why have you just stood by and, and, and watched these things develop surpasses all comprehension, all understanding.
He will guard your heart and mind.
In Christ, Jesus, there are people who become alcoholics because they don’t know how to deal with certain situations in their life.
And they go to the bottle or people who get into all kinds of all kinds of things happen to people that is, there are situations and circumstances.
God understands how traumatic, how difficult, how painful, how sorry it is.
Here’s what he says and the peace of God, it’s the peace of God, not somebody’s explanation, not a bottle, not an the peace of God which surpasses all comprehension will guard your hearts and minds.
How in Christ that is my relationship to Jesus will guard me from giving up hope.
My relationship to Jesus will guard me from blaming God and accusing Him of turning away from God or walking away from His will.
The peace of God will guard our hearts and minds in Christ, Jesus awesome promises of God, the faithfulness of God.
And think about this, the moment you received the Holy Spirit came into your life and He’s there.
He’s the one who convicts us of sin, gives us comfort and assurance in our life.
He’s also the one who limits the power of Satan in our life.
Listen to second Thessalonians 33, but the Lord is faithful. Watch this. The Lord is faithful.
That is you can trust Him.
He will strengthen and protect you from the devil, from the evil one.
That’s the promise of God. And you know, when people say, well, the devil made me do it.
No, he didn’t. You chose to do it. You chose not to believe God.
You chose to call God Allah who says I will strengthen you and protect you from the evil one.
And you have said no God, if you were God, here’s the promise. Here are four simple promises.
The first is the forgiveness of our sins.
Simple promise limits our temptation and gives us peace amidst their anxieties and limits the power of Satan in our life with those four awesome promises in your life, you can face about anything and they’re all simple verses, you know, by heart.
If you’ve been coming to this fellowship, or you go be going to a church where the pastor is faithfully preaching the word, you already know those verses, but you put them together and put him in a capsule of faithfulness because God is faithful.
I’m not going to yield to that because God is faithful. I don’t understand it, but I’m gonna trust him.
In other words, you can go right down the line.
These four verses, forgiveness of sin limits the power of temptation. Peace amidst our anxieties, limits the power of Satan.
You can walk through anything if you believe it. If you trust him.
Now, it’s interesting when you read the word of God and then these difficult times come, we find, we find out whether we believe it or not and so watch this, we’re gonna be tested and tried.
You, you can expect that and you say, well, why, why?
In other words if God loves me, why does he test me and try me?
What do you think he does?
You say well, if he, if God’s all knowing, he didn’t have to test you to find out what you would do.
He already knows what you’re gonna do.
He doesn’t try us and test us are allowed in their life to find out what we would do.
He knows what we would do.
He wants us to know when we are strong, when we are weak or when some particular sin may be at your doorstep every day.
I think of how many people who wake up, they hate drinking, but they’re gonna drink, wake up knowing that adultery and fornication and all kinds of attitudes about sin and sex.
No, they’re not right. They’re gonna face them again. Our God says He’s faithful.
He’s put a limitation, watch this.
He’s put a personal limitation on your life of what you have to face and what you don’t face.
And he’s not gonna let you be tempted above what you’re able to bear is a divine promise of Holy God.
So the person says, well, God knows I’m sort of weak in that area and He, he shouldn’t, he shouldn’t allow that.
No. He knows you weak in that area and he wants to strengthen you so that you no longer wake up every morning.
I go to bed every night, facing some attitude that you have or some situation you’re gonna have to face.
God is faithful. He keeps his promise.
And then when the bible, for example, refers to the fruit of the spirit which He does in Galatians, five faithfulness.
He’s referring to the lifestyle, you know how to live. That is faithfulness ought to be part of our lifestyle.
Somebody says, well, what is your lifestyle like?
Well, I try to look the best I can do the best I can be the best I can trust God or whatever it might be.
God has the best choices for us.
I have to decide if I’m going to choose his way or my way.
If I choose my way, I’m gonna get in trouble, choose his way.
I’ll walk out of the trouble, I’ll walk out of the trouble, victorious.
Walk out of the trouble, trusting God who put a limitation on whatever trial I may be facing.
So, let’s think about this.
The Bible says that uh when the Holy Spirit is living within us, we’ll have a lifestyle that is if I’m walking in the spirit, trusting Him, I’m gonna be devoted to God.
That is He’s gonna be the one that I follow.
Are you a person who is devoted to God?
People know you as a Christian as the follow of Jesus.
Is that who you are loyal? Do they know you as a loyal person?
You do what you say you’ll be there when you say you will, you’ll give what you say you’ll give, you’ll help.
When you say you have, are you loyal?
Can they count on you to be on their side in a tough situation? Thirdly unwavering.
That is, you’re the same every day. You’re not this today and that tomorrow.
Can they believe what you say? Can they trust you to tell them the truth? Steadfast? Are you steadfast?
That is you’re steady, you’re solid. You’re not shaking about this and that they can count on you trustworthy.
You’re believable. You only tell the truth to those who know, you can say, well, she’s a very trustworthy but you, if she said that you believe in dependable, that is when you say you’ll be there, you’ll be there.
When you say I’ll give this, that’s what you give.
When you say you will do a certain thing, you will.
That is the people who know you say one thing about him, he or she is dependable, obedient.
Can it be said of you that you’re a person who attempts to obey God doesn’t mean you’re perfect, but you sort of attempt to obey God, they know you as a person than fruitful.
Your life’s counting. Your life is counting. It’s making a difference. It’s influencing somebody.
And the truth is you’re influencing the people.
You work around the people you live around in your own home, you’re influencing them one way or the other.
And the last one I would say is faithful.
So look at this, if we are living in obedience, devoted to God, loyal to God unwavering before sin, steadfast, trustworthy, dependable, obedient, fruitful, faithful.
You, well, all of that in one person’s life, you are to heaven.
What you can do in your own strength, we all blow it.
So what God is after in all of us, watch this scare for me is to believe Him to the point that we trust Him for anything, everything in every circumstance of life you say, well, I’m not there yet.
Well, most people are not there yet. You say, well, when will we get there?
I can’t answer that for you. If you ask me? Can I trust God for every single thing?
I have two thoughts. I think I can.
But there’s some things I’ve not faced. I don’t know.
I just know at this point in my life I believe I can trust them for just about anything.
But I wouldn’t boast of that. Don’t ever tell anybody. I said I can trust any.
I can just handle it and everything.
I’ve handled a lot of things, but there are people who’ve been through situations and circumstances that I have not.
And so we have to be patient with each other when you see somebody stumble, don’t be too quickly to judge him.
You may have the same opportunity. You don’t call it an opportunity.
But in other words, that’s sort of what it is when it comes to learning to trust God, we have opportunities to trust them in every circumstance of life.
And there, there are people who’ve been through situations and circumstances that I have known.
And I thought, oh God, I trust that I’d have the faith and the faithfulness that they’ve had to walk through that storm and li they’ll never boast of how much you have trust God.
So does this describe you as a person, your actions, your deeds, your thoughts that you’re a person who is devoted to God?
He is first, you’re loyal to him. You don’t, you don’t deny him.
You don’t, you don’t deny that you’re a believer. You’re unwavering.
You’re not up today and down tomorrow, you’re steady in your Christian life.
You’re steadfast, you’re committed, you’re trustworthy. Whatever you say is what you do. You’re dependable.
That is somebody can depend upon you to do what you promise to do. You’re obedient as best.
You know what obedience requires in your life. You’re fruitful.
Your life is making a difference in somebody else’s life and you’re faithful.
That is you are who you say you are. You do what you say you’ll do.
You’ll be what you say. You’ll be amen.
Father, how grateful we are that you didn’t save us and just leave us here to manage to do the best we can because some lord, you know, we don’t always do the very best we can.
But you know, our hearts desire and I pray for people who are struggling this morning.
Maybe they live in a household where nobody else is a Christian or their husband or wife is not all the Children giving him a very difficult time.
Whatever it may be, we thank you that you live within us and you have made these promises to us to enable us to be all that you want us to be.
We thank you for these simple passages of scripture, the life transforming and real assuring.
We love you and praise you and thank you that your word says.
And we know by experience, you’re a faithful God and we love that song. Great. Is thou faithfulness?
Oh Lord, our God. We pray this in Jesus name.
Amen.