The Faithfulness of God - Part 2

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Wednesday, April 5. If you're a believer in Jesus, your hope for today and for eternity rests on the faithfulness of God. Let's listen and be encouraged to believe what He says with perfect confidence. Now, when we say that God is faithful, we're simply saying that you can depend upon God to do what He said He would do. You can always depend upon God doing what He said He would do. Listen, what God is is always consistent with what God does, and what God does is always consistent with what God is. You'll never find God acting in a way that He is not. He is never anything that is contradicted of what He does. When we say that God is faithful, that means that you and I have a God in whom we can put absolute, total, and complete trust, and never even give one thought to the fact that God will ever fail us under any condition.

Now, I know what somebody's thinking. You say, yeah, but He's failed me. No, He hasn't. And I want to show you who did the failing and why a little later. But I think the first thing I want us to do is I want us to go through the Scriptures here and look at some verses, and I want you to mark them in your Bible.

Some of them you may already have marked because I've probably referred to these at some time or the other. I want us to get a few verses in our mind that God is faithful. That is, we can depend on Him. We can trust Him.

He's not going to change. In other words, the faithfulness of God in simple terms is this. God will do what He says He will do every time He says He will do it, regardless of the circumstances or the consequences. That is the foundation of every ounce of confidence you have in your spiritual life. If there was the slightest indication in the Bible that God proved unfaithful at any one point, our whole faith in God would shatter. And if you don't get that attribute rooted and grounded in your heart when it comes to praying, when you get in temptation, when it comes to forgiveness, when you start getting your conscience clear, when you start looking back, if you don't believe God's faithful, here's what will happen.

You'll drag a whole lot of excess baggage all the way through your life, and you'll carry a weight God never intended you to carry. All right, if you'll flip over to Lamentations chapter 3, you need to mark these two verses if you don't have them marked. Verse 22 says, It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not.

Why? Because He's faithful. Listen, verse 23, They that His compassions are new every morning, great is thy faithfulness. Now listen, when you get up tomorrow morning on these beautiful mornings, and you look out the window and the sun's shining, listen, that's the time to praise the Lord, because what you arose to was not only the shining of the sun, but what? The faithfulness of God.

Faithful in what? That when you get up tomorrow morning, the Bible says that the mercies of God are extended to you when you awaken. Now listen, if tomorrow morning it is cloudy and rainy and a little cool, you say, uh-oh, sun's not shining. Has nothing to do with the mercies of God, what did He say? He said the compassions of God are what?

They're new every morning, that is, He never runs out. When every morning when you and I get up, we ought to claim the compassions and the mercies and the love of God extended to us. Now listen, if you get up tomorrow morning before your feet hit the floor, before you get out of the bed, you thank God for His mercies. Thank God for His compassions. Thank God for His goodness and love toward you for that day. For tomorrow morning, I'll guarantee you that all day long, you'll have a sense of the presence of God.

Listen, He says they are new every morning. Great is the faithfulness of God. All right now, look in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 verse 24. God has given all of us a gift, therefore we can all expect God to give us some kind of ministry. Faithful is He that calleth you who also will do it.

Now what is He promising us? And notice what He said, faithful is He. That means that whatever God calls you to do, you and I have the right to put out total expectation, not in our energy, not in our ability, not in our gifts, not in our capacity, not in our experience.

When God calls us to do something, God is going to enable you to do that fruitfully, successfully, faithfully and you're going to invest your life in an area that is going to bless you, glorify God and multiply His work. God is faithful and He says, faithful is He that calleth you who will enable you, energize you, strengthen you, give you the knowledge, give you the understanding, gift you, talent you, whatever is essential for you to fulfill God's purpose in your life. Listen, He is responsible. Now here's what He's saying, you and I don't have to work it out ourselves. He's saying, trust Me, trust Me, trust Me, trust Me, trust Me, trust Me. And to me personally, those are the two greatest words I've ever heard, trust Me. Because you can put one foot on trust and the other foot on Me, and if all hell falls apart beneath you, you're still on solid ground. He says we're to rest in the faithfulness of God, not in our ability. He said, trust in His faithfulness.

Listen, all He's saying is, will you just please believe God is who He says He is? The dependable, trustworthy, truthful God. When things are rough and rugged, that's where the faithfulness of God has the privilege of making itself real in your heart. All right, look in 1 Corinthians chapter 10 verse 13. There hath no temptation taken you or just pounded you, hit you, hit you from behind, but such as is common to man, that is, all of us have them, but God is faithful.

That means, man, when everything breaks loose, He's standing right there. God is faithful who will not allow you to be tempted above that you're able, but also will with the temptation also make a way to escape that you may be able to bear it. He didn't say sometimes, He didn't say except in the following circumstances, He didn't say, but you have a unique situation. I hear people say that all the time, but you see, my situation is different.

Listen, do you think you're an exception to that? Well, either the Bible is true or it's not true. So when Satan hits you with something, remember this, not sometimes, not most of the times, not every once in a while, not in a unique situation, not an unusual situation, not in your situation, but in everybody's situation. A faithful, loving God is there to do what?

To put a hedge around you. And He says He will not allow Satan to tempt us or try us more than we are able to bear as we trust the Lord. That is, God always has the limitations set on everything that you and I will ever face. Now, tomorrow or sometime this week, you're going to face something, you'll say, well, where is God? He's right where He promised to be. God is faithful, who will not?

Listen, and we go back to the other attributes. If God isn't sovereign, He can't fulfill 1 Corinthians 10, 13. If He's not omniscient, He can't do it because He won't know you're being tempted. If He's not omnipresent, He won't do it because He won't be there to do it. If He's not omnipotent, He can't do it.

If He's not loving, He won't even want to do it. You and I could run all the way through the attributes. You've got to have them all to have God. Because He is all of that and because He can be depended upon, it matters not how we attempted and tried, we can know we already had the victory. You see, here's where most of us are. We're down in the gullies and in the valleys of life struggling to get up. God says we're to walk in the victory looking down at the devil.

We live on the victory, not struggling for it. God is faithful. When you look at the hand of God, you just see plain old you standing right in the hand of God in His omnipotent, sovereign, omniscient, omnipresent, just loving grip.

There isn't anything that can get through that unless God decides to give you a little test. God's put a hedge above us. So He's faithful to preserve us, faithful to pardon us, faithful in every area of our life.

Well, let's look at another one here. It is of the Lord's mercies that we're not consumed because His compassions fail not. You see, in each one of these things that I've mentioned, we go down every time, were it not for the faithfulness of God.

They are new every morning. Great is Thy faithfulness. Now listen, let's take any promise in the Bible you just name one. Let's take Philippians 4, 13, I can do all things. Philippians 4, 19, He supplies all my needs.

Go back in the Old Testament about His guidance all the way through the Bible. Listen, if God is not faithful, the promises of the Scripture are meaningless. Because here's what it says, maybe He will and maybe He won't. You see, you don't have to cut a whole bunch of hymns out of the hymn book. We couldn't sing blessed assurance, Jesus is mine, oh what a foretaste of glory divine.

Maybe He will be, maybe He won't. You see, the fact that God is faithful is the one undercurrent that validates every single promise in the book. The only way in the world you can say to a lost man, if you will give your heart to Jesus Christ, if you will surrender your life to Him, He will save you. And listen, don't you tell a man that with all the confidence in the world?

Why are you telling that? Why do you believe He will? He saves you, you've seen Him save other folks, but primarily, because the Bible says He will.

Well now, somebody sitting here tonight, and you're going through a real difficult period in your life, and you really just don't know how to act and how to respond, what to do. He says, come unto me all ye that are labored in the heavy laden, I'll give you rest. He says, we can abide under the shadow of the Almighty. He says He will protect us and care for us. He will give us guidance and direction. Now, if His promise to save a man is always true, then all the other promises are true.

If He's not faithful, none of them are. Let's just take, for example, His promise to answer prayer. Look, if you will, in Psalm 143 in verse 1. And all of us have favorite promises, but look, if you can take your favorite promise and write under it, God is faithful, then you will have no grounds for questions of doubting God.

Psalm 143 verse 1 says, hear my prayer, O Lord, give ear to my supplication. Now watch this, in thy faithfulness, answer me, and in thy righteousness. In thy faithfulness, answer me. Why are you going to answer me, Lord?

Because you're faithful. Now watch this, the same faithful God who forgives you every time you ask Him, the same faithful God who will preserve you in difficulty and heartache, the same faithful God who will stand true to His promises, your favorite promises, the one you have to go to over and over and over again, the same faithful God who answers your prayer is the same faithful God who is faithful to His warnings as well as He is to His promises. He said to Adam and Eve, the day that you eat of the fruit of the tree in this garden, this tree ye shall surely die.

And they ate and they spiritually died. You and I can go through the Old Testament. For example, you take the whole history of the nation of Israel. Listen, somebody says, I don't get much out of the Old Testament. If you will read the Old Testament looking for God's intervention in the life of the nation of Israel, every time He made them a promise, He promised to bless them if they would obey, but He warned them what would happen if they disobeyed.

Here's the thing we need to get a hold of. The fellow says, oh, yes, I believe God. I believe God is faithful. Well, let me tell you something He said. He said if I regard iniquity in my heart, He will not hear me.

Now, watch this. The same God who can be trusted to answer my prayer is the same God who can be equally trusted not to answer my prayer because He's being faithful to His principle where there is known willful sin, God does not answer the prayer. Now, you can take every single principle in the Bible that you and I violate. You see, if God were faithful to His promises and He's not faithful to His principles, then you and I would no longer have faith in His promise.

He must be faithful to His principles and faithful to His promise. The promise is ask and it shall be given you, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you. The principle is if I regard iniquity in my heart, God will not hear me.

Now, here's what we want to do. We want to take the principle and hide it and we want to hold up the promise and expect God to answer it. If I'm going to get a promise based on the faithfulness of God, I've got to remember that God is equally faithful to the principle upon which that promise stands.

Now, you need to get that in your heart, principle and promise. If you expect Him to be faithful to His promise, you see, He's faithful to His promise, but now watch this. What is His promise?

You've got to look at it just like this. When God sees His promise to answer your prayer, He sees that promise through His principle and you and I must see it the same way. The principle is my heart must be clean if God is going to be faithful to answer my prayer. He's going to be faithful. What is He faithful to? He's faithful to His principle and His promise. He's not faithful just to the principle without promise. He's not faithful to just promise without principle.

He's faithful to His principle and His promise. That means that God will never contradict Himself so that if you've been to God and you've claimed a promise and God hadn't come through, check out the principle that you have violated. Now, you need to get a hold of that because if you can get the principle and the promise in the right perspective, God is faithful.

That is, brother, if He says He'll do it, He'll do it. Let me give you a good verse. John chapter 15, for example, verse 7. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will and it shall be done to you. Now, when you first read that promise, you think, how in the world could God make such an astounding statement and so totally inclusive that He'll just do anything we ask?

Now, watch this. The principle is not that God's just going to answer any prayer. If you are abiding in the Word and the Word is abiding in you, that means if the Word of God is living within you and is a vital part of your thinking, a vital part of your life, He says you can ask anything you want and God will do it.

Why? Because the Word cleanses, checks out our motivation, sifts out the things that are not pleasing to God and we will only ask what is in keeping with the Word. Somebody says, well, wait a minute now.

If I'm tempted, what is the principle? What does God say? He says flee youthful lust. He says we're to run from temptation.

We're to resist it. But now He says, again, He says if you take fire into your bosom, you're going to get scorched. You see, you can't court it, brother, and claim 1 Corinthians 10 and 13 and say, well, God didn't keep His promise. Yes, He did. But when you violate it, when you violate the running and the resisting and the escaping and the claiming the promise of God and claiming God's protection on you and the blood of Jesus Christ upon your mind, when you ignore all of that and wonder why you failed and say, well, God isn't faithful.

Yes, He is. That's why I want to go back. You can't beat reading this Bible and getting these principles into your life. So if you want to claim the promises of God based on the faithfulness of God, you've got to get the principle and the promise together. Now, Dad, you need to teach that to your children when they're so young they can hardly understand what a principle and a promise is in their life. He is faithful. He's so faithful that if we disobey Him, He's faithful to His promise to chastise us. He is so faithful He will never violate a principle in order to fulfill a promise. The principle and the promise must always go together. And listen. Because He is God and because He's faithful, it doesn't make a difference what happens.

You can trust Him. Thank you for listening to part two of The Faithfulness of God. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by intouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.