4 Minute Devotions: Faithfulness

It's only through God's faithfulness to His Word, that we can ever be restored to His favor and love.

Podcast version here

1 Corinthians 1:9 God, who has called you into fellowship with His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.

My faith is built upon the faithfulness of God. If God was ever unfaithful to His Word, my faith would instantly diminish and be destroyed. I depend upon His words being true, which is why I hold fast to the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

This gets me into bother sometimes, especially with other Christians whose affinity to the faith does not depend upon how truthful God’s Word is, but on how much they believe that God’s Word is trumped by God’s Love. Acceptance and tolerance are the keys to their faith and sometimes I envy them. It would be so easy to give up on God’s Word and interpret things the way that I wanted. Life would be less cumbersome without divine rules, regulations, and readings. I could do as I please, instead of trying to do what would please God.

Now don’t get the impression that I am a sanctimonious, saintly, separationist who delights in being perfect and loves it when other people fail. I am a sinful person, whose mistakes often disappoint God, other people, and even me. Because I hold fast to the faithfulness of God’s Word, it hurts me to hurt Him. My failure to remain faithful, however, does not diminish the truth about God’s Word. He remains faithful, so that when I seek forgiveness, He pardons me through the precious blood of Christ.

That’s why my faith is built upon God’s faithfulness. Left to myself, I cannot always keep His words. At some point, during each day of my life, I am going to sin. My thoughts, my words, or my deeds are going to betray God. Whether it’s intentional or not, the result is still the same: through my selfishness, I have separated myself from God. It’s only through His faithfulness that I can ever be restored to God’s favor and love.

Perhaps you’ve separated yourself from God through something that you’ve done or said. Maybe like me, you find yourself spiritually alone because of selfish and sinful ways. It seems as though there’s no hope, no solution, and no one to turn to, but that is completely wrong. God is faithful and He will find us, no matter how lost, sinful, or unfaithful we have been.

Prayer: Lord God, we all make mistakes and allow our sinful ways to separate us from Your love. We feel alienated and isolated, spiritually crushed and totally abandoned at times. Despite what we do to what we do to ourselves, You remain faithful and offer us forgiveness through the holy sacrifice of Your Son Jesus Christ. Help us at this time, to turn to Him and receive Your mercy and grace. In Christ’s Name, we humbly pray. Amen.

John Stuart is the pastor of Erin Presbyterian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. If you would like to comment on today’s message, send him an email to pastor@erinpresbyterian.org.

Daily Devotional : Living Freely - why open government is good for everyone

1 Peter 2:16 Live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God. (NIV)

Our town, Knoxville, Tennessee, has been rocked by the corrupt practices of our local government. Our local newspaper, the News-Sentinel, has at last lived up to its name by bringing a law suit against the Knox County commissioners who made backroom deals with regard to replacement commissioners. According to the Sentinel’s law suit, these commissioners broke the Sunshine law by ensuring that their own people, and in some cases, their own family members, were awarded the vacant seats. We even ended up having a convicted drug dealer representing some people in our county. How corrupt is that?

For some people, this was major news. They didn’t think that our local government was capable of this kind of wheeling and dealing. For me, it was old news. You may remember that I was a regular guest of the morning radio show “The Voice” hosted by Lloyd Daugherty and Kelvin Moxley. We had been talking about this level of corruption in local government eighteen months before the newspaper decided to take up the cudgel and try to oust the backroom boys. We raised these issues on a regular basis and became a thorn in the authority’s side. We stopped broadcasting because some mysterious buyers purchased the station and turned it into a sports radio channel. It seems to me that we were making waves, so some groups were happy when we were no longer on the air.

Now these issues have come to the surface and the whole town is reeling from it. Our trust in our local commissioners has hit an all time low and it will probably take one or two elections to properly oust the backroom shenanigans and replace it with open government. Perhaps, in due course, our county commissioners will gain the respect of the people, and use their power not to cover up shady dealings, but to live as servants of the people they represent.

I guess this is an unusual devotional this morning because it deals with politics instead of faith, but in God’s world there is no separation. All of us are accountable for what we do with our freedom and our faith. Let’s hope and pray that we can all do a better job of choosing our representatives in the future, and that they will do an excellent job of representing their constituents.

Prayer: Lord, we pray for those who are in authority above us through being elected to represent the people in government. We ask that You will guide their hearts and minds to freely, fairly, and openly make decisions on behalf of our community. Grant them the courage to oust corruption and to stand up to those who would take false advantage of their privileged positions. In Your Holy Name, we pray. Amen.