Fruits of the Spirit: Faithfulness

Galatians 5:16-25 KJV

16 This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.

17 For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.

18 But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.

19 Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,

20 Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,

21 Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,

23 Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.

24 And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.

25 If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.

Faithfulness Is:

A promise (Romans 3:3, Lamentations 3:23) to keep one's word, and do one's best (1 Thessalonians 1:3) with a servant-attitude focused on the Master's approval (Matthew 25:21).

To avoid spoiling watch for weariness, laziness, procrastination, and discouragement.

Ask me how I am at any given point in the day and I'll probably give you one of the above answers. I'm either tired and weary, being lazy, procrastinating and avoiding something, or I'm just downright discouraged.  Exactly the perfect conditions to spoil the fruit of faithfulness. We know that the Fruits of the Spirit build one upon the other so we know what the perfect conditions to ripen our faithfulness to harvest are. They are love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness and goodness. I need to fill my days with these fruits so that I can be faithful to my Savior, so that I can walk in His Spirit as I have been commanded to do.

Perhaps the most important part of faithfulness is the servant-attitude focused on the Master's approval and no one else's. In writing this blog I often struggle with discouragement. Sometimes I feel like there is little to no point in writing these posts because perhaps I don't get the volume of feedback I'd like from the audience I had hoped to reach.  I let myself get bogged down in looking for approval from my peers instead of my Master. Do I need encouragement from my brothers and sisters in Christ? Yes! Absolutely! But ultimately it is His approval that I should crave. It was Him after all that gave His life so that I could live a life covered by the blood. Yet, although I pray for guidance before writing any of my posts, I still find myself second guessing what I've written until I get an "atta girl" from family or friends.  I've told my Momma this before. She scolded me. And I needed it. She told me that second guessing what the Holy Ghost had given me would do nothing but irk Him and I certainly didn't want that. She's right. If I ask Him to use me, to guide me, to give me the words He'd have me use, and then I doubt what He gave me, I'm failing in my faithfulness, in my promise to do my best.

I believe that God gives each of us a specific and unique gift, with one outcome in mind: to be profitable in the Gospel, to use our talent to point others to Christ.  In Matthew 25:14-30 we find Jesus telling the parable of the talents.  The Master gave to each servant according to his abilities. The man with 5 talents and the man with 2 talents each received the same amount of praise because they were profitable, they had each doubled their talents. The third man hid his 1 talent in fear and was cast into outer darkness where there was weeping and gnashing of teeth because he was unprofitable.  

This parable isn't speaking of money but of our individual ability, our specific and unique gift, to serve God. Because although Salvation is not of works, our Salvation will give us the desire to do good works for our Savior.

We must be rich in the fruit of our faithfulness to be profitable for Christ even when we do not always understand the happenings of our lives. 

Faith is a deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you may not understand at the time. --Oswald Chambers

When I miscarried in my 5th pregnancy in January this year, I had no idea what God's reasoning was.  I felt that we were finally getting our lives back on track and that a baby was going to multiply our joy exponentially. But God said, "Not now."  I couldn't understand His will at the time but I made the deliberate choice to have confidence, to have faith in Him. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that we'd have founded Help the Hurt Ministry and odds are, we wouldn't have with a baby on the way. Finishing my degree is something I've tried to do a couple of times in the past and now, I'm praying, it's going to become a reality, slowly but surely. Brandon too, is on his way to getting a college degree. God has given us a mission and we want to be faithful enough to see it through to completion. My heart sill aches with the desire to have a baby, but again, I have to be faithful and know that the Lord will answer my prayer in His own time.

Esther 4:14b KJV

And who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?

We have been put here on this earth, in these specific circumstances, for a time such as this. We all know in our heart what our calling is, how we can serve our Lord and Savior in the best way possible. Our faithfulness is our promise to heed to our calling and to do our best as servants seeking the Master's approval.