Normally, I write about things that I learned over the previous week/month in the course of Bible study or daily life. Today, I’m going to write about something I learned today because I’m super excited about it!
Okay, so this morning in my Bible study (I’m still doing Beth Moore’s Living Beyond Yourself) I started the section on faithfulness. Now, I don’t know what you think of when you think of faithfulness, but I usually think of doing something consistently regardless of how difficult it is because it’s the right thing to do. Hmm, guess that says a lot about my life, eh?
Anyway! Beth Moore quoted The Complete Word Study Dictionary where they defined faithfulness this way: “firm persuasion, conviction, belief in the truth, veracity, reality or faithfulness” (Spiros Zodhiates et. al., ads., The Complete Word Study Dictionary: New Testament [Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers, 1992], 1162).
Now the part that struck me was that “reality” bit. It actually cracked me up because Beth Moore made a similar point only a paragraph later–after I’d already scribbled in my margins. The thought I was having is that faithfulness equals living according to God’s reality or aligning with God’s reality.
Why am I so excited about this?
Aligning with something is kind of the easy part–at least in my experience. You don’t have to figure out where to cut if there’s a pattern you’re following–you just cut on the lines. Aligning with God’s principles works the same way: we just follow the pattern.
In Tai Chi, we talk a lot about body structure and how to align your body with the way it’s designed to work. If you’re out of alignment–for example, bending forward when you’re trying to lift something or trying to grab something with your arm behind your back–it takes a LOT more work to accomplish anything. Aligning with God’s principles actually makes life easier. It may not feel like it sometimes–Lord knows, there are days I wish I could eat whatever and still be healthy, but that’s not the way my body is designed to work–but it actually is. When we do things God’s way, we miss out on the consequences. As you may have noticed, I’ve been blogging a fair bit about money lately because I’m working on changing my perspective. If I come at money from a fear standpoint, I won’t handle money well (regardless of how much or how little I actually have). Aligning with God’s principles means recognizing it’s all God’s money anyway and just being intentional about how we spend it.
And finally, I love that it’s reality. This is the rubber meeting the road. This the way things actually are. This is life-changing on a day-to-day basis. One of my very favorite things about God is that He is transcendent–He has a third-person perspective on the nature of reality; He knows the truth of everything. When God tells us a principle about the world, we are absolutely guaranteed to prosper when we follow that principle–whether it’s a moral principle (for example, don’t lie or don’t have sex outside of marriage) or a life principle (“the borrower is servant to the lender”[Prov. 22:7 or “stress makes you sick” [e.g., Prov. 3:7-8; 14:30; 17:22; ]).
Why can we be faithful? I love that Beth Moore talked about both the fact that faithfulness is part of the fruit of the Spirit (and thus only possible via the Holy Spirit’s work in us) and that our faithfulness is a response to God’s faithfulness. We can be faithful because God is faithful. We can believe God because He’s always trustworthy and honest. We can align with God’s reality because it’s always the real way the world works.
How sweet is that?! I love that we can trust God and that He never leaves us.
So, now that you have this perspective on faithfulness, are there any areas where you need to align your life with God’s reality? And if so, how?
