Fruit of the Spirit: Faithfulness

The Faithfulness Story

When our son died three years ago, I decided that I would try to read the entire Bible for Lent that year. The amount of daily reading was pretty intense, but I was on a 3 month maternity leave with no baby to take care of, so I found I had loads of time to fill. Moving so quickly from creation to John’s revelation gave me a bird’s-eye view of how God had been at work over the span of thousands of years. And at that time in my life, a reminder of God’s faithfulness was exactly what I needed.

Years of Waiting

The stories in the Bible move so quickly from one encounter with God to the next, that we gloss over the numbers that mark the time in between. Entire lifetimes were lived—the Israelites were in Egypt for 400 years¹, they wandered around the desert for 40 years², Jacob worked for Rachel for 14 years,³ Simeon waited his whole life to meet the Messiah.⁴ We forget about the hundreds and thousands of days, hours and minutes where people watched and waited for God to fulfill his promises.

I am sure the people of Israel, or the disciples, or the New Testament Christians went through many daily struggles that caused them to question if they had been forgotten by God.

Being in the midst of a pandemic that has drawn on for more than a year has been difficult enough—let alone 40 or 400 years! I often feel the impatience of wishing things would “go back to normal,” but how much more so would the question, “how long, O Lord”⁵ have been on the lips of those who spent their entire lives waiting?

The Birds Eye View

When we’re going through the day to day, it’s easy to forget that there is an overarching plan that we are included in. Being reminded of the bird’s-eye view from time to time reminds us that God is faithful, that he is at work and that he gives us strength to live faithfully by the Spirit.

Preparing Our Hearts

We know of God’s faithfulness in the past and we can trust that he will continue to be faithful in the future.⁶ How can we live out the fruit of faithfulness in response?

1

Genesis 15:13

2

Joshua 5:6

3

Genesis 29:18-30

4

Luke 2:25-35

5

Psalm 13:1

6

Philippians 1:6