Proving God’s Faithfulness

We often think of a trial of faith as the proof we give to God of our faithfulness to Him. But these trials are also an opportunity for God to prove His faithfulness to us. God will not forsake us. He will not leave us comfortless. He is with us every step of the way, and while it’s easy to imagine that God is with us when everything is going great, it is invaluable to know from firsthand experience that He is with us when everything is terrible. Climb Mount Moriah and sacrifice your only son. It will be the hardest thing you do, but I will be with you. Walk into the Red Sea with a million people depending on you for their salvation. I’ll be with you. Build a boat with no experience and no tools. I’ll be with you. God gives us hard times to prove that He will remain with us. He will ease the burdens placed upon us, He will speak peace to our worried souls, He will pour the balm of Gilead into our wounds, He will weep with us in the anguish of our souls and then He will wipe away our tears and sweep us up in His embrace and reassure us that even though everything is terrible, He is with us. Every trial of faith proves our faithfulness to God and it proves God’s faithfulness to us. We are in this together and He has His whole soul in it, and He invites us to commit our whole souls as well. Life will often be chaotic. It will be terrifying and frustrating and disheartening. We’ll want to give up, to give in, to give out. And we will. Often. We will prove ourselves faithless again and again. We will fail so many of the trials of our faith that we will question the wisdom in God’s continued faith in us. Why doesn’t God just give up on us when we’ve so clearly given up on ourselves? But God does not give up on us. He sees us as we really are, and who we really can be. There is no veil of forgetfulness over his eyes. He sees us as His children full of light and truth and glory and power. He sees us at our best and He sees us at our worst. He sees us find the time and the energy to help one another out, even when we’re barely holding the fraying pieces of our life together. He sees us get knocked down over and over and over, and somehow we get back up again. He sees us lost and confused and somehow still hoping that it will all turn out all right. And it will. Because He is there. He’s on our right and on our left, He goes before our face and He lifts us up, as on the wings of eagles. He gives us hard times as a gift, so that we may know He is faithful to us to the bitter end, and so that we may know that we are faithful to Him even to the bitter end. He will never give up on us, and sooner or later, we will come to embrace the truth that we will never give up on Him.