Faithfulness

 Greetings to you all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,

     Lamentations 3:22-23 says, “It is of the LORD'S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.  They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.”

     I have lead a lot of singing in my ministry over the years and one song we often sang was “Standing on the Promises.”  There were times on Sunday evening that we would stop after every verse and chorus and shout out one of the promises that was special to a member of the congregation.  Some of them that were mentioned were “Jesus is coming again,” “God will never leave us nor forsake us,”  “God would supply all of our needs.”  

     There are those times when we need to recall the promises that we find in God’s Word.  Life is filled with difficult times.  You find that out even more as you age and are not able to do what  you would like to do.  The promises that God makes are more sure and guarant eed by the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from the tomb.  Living in an assisted living facility marks you aware of the frailty of life as residents pass away.  There have been about seven who have passed away out of our total of fifty residents in less than a year.  God, however , is continually faithful to His family, to those who are believers in the Lord Jesus Chrsit.  The Book of Lamentations is rightly named as it reflects the condition of Jerusalem and indeed all of Israel after the capture by King Nebuchadnezzar . The walls were knocked down, the temple was totally destroyed and ransacked of anything of value.  There was no food nor wate and the best of the people were taken to Babylon for a period of about seventy years.  Lamentations is filled with sorrow and tears, yet right in the middle of the five chapters, comes a sweet promise from God and that it is that He is faithful no matter what is going on in the lives of His children.  God is always faithful.  We have a song, “Great is they Faithfulness” that has its roots in this passage of scripture. We can thank God for His faithfulness, even when we are not faithful.  How many times to fail in this area, then come to God for forgiveness and then move on trying to be faithful in the commandments that He has given to us.  The holy men of God wrote under the inspirat ion of the Holy jSpirit, the Word of God which is often filled with “imperative” commands.  They are not suggestions, but rather exhortatons on h ow to live the Christian life.  You can spend your life in Ephesians, or Philippians, or Colossians or all of the epistles, maturing in your Christian life.  From the above passage, we know that God is faithful and so we should be endeavoring to be faithful also.  Praise God for His faithfulness.  May we endeavor to be more faithful everyday.