A to Z Scripture Challenge, Week 6

Lovely graphic by Abby at Little Birdie Blessings

  This is week 6 in Ellen's  A to Z Bible Verse Challenge over at The Happy Wonderer.    This is such an encouraging series to help us stay our hearts and minds on God and His Word during these days.  I hope that many of us are playing along with this challenge and thinking about Scripture verses containing the letter of the week.  Even if we don't all link up with Ellen's blog,  we can all open our Bibles and search out verses.  Today we are looking for words beginning with the letter F.  There are many good possibilities, but I chose the word Faithfulness.

"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."  (Lamentations 3:22-23)

"There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it."  (1 Corinthians 10:13)

"Faithful" here is the Greek pistos, meaning "to be trusted; reliable."  And that is certainly true of God!

The following words from Ruth Paxson's book Life on the Highest Plane were an encouragement to me. Maybe they will be a blessing to someone else today.

"Our faith may falter but His faithfulness never. Peter failed Christ oh! so miserably that three times over he could deny his Lord. But the faithfulness of Jesus Christ to Peter remained unshaken. The heavenly Father cannot forget His promises nor can He deny Himself by failing to keep them.

Psalm 89:33, "Nevertheless my lovingkindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer My faithfulness to fail."

2 Timothy 2:13, ""If we believe not, yet He abideth faithful: He cannot deny Himself."

We may even be ready to give up in defeat to the enemy or to lay down our task in sheer discouragement. We may be on the point of taking our hand from the plow and turning back. But Christ is not discouraged; He will not give up; He acknowledges no victory on the devil's part. He has called us into fellowship with Himself; He has owned us as His possession and has assumed His responsibility for our control and He will not lay it aside. What He has begun in us He will continue. His work in us does not depend upon our love for Him but on His love for us; not faith in our faith but faith in His faithfulness is what He wants from us."
-- Ruth Paxson, Life on the Highest Plane
 

For even more encouragement concerning God's faithfulness, I suggest you also read over the words of the hymn "Great is Thy Faithfulness".  If you keep a hymnal or two around your home, as I do, it will be easy to look up the hymn.  Or you could easily find it online.  Another wonderful resource is this post by Abby at Little Birdie Blessings: Great is Thy Faithfulness.  Or look at any of Abby's Scripture-filled posts and free graphics.  You are sure to be blessed and encouraged!

 In 2016, I chose Faithfulness as my word for the year, and at first had in mind God's faithfulness to His people.  But in a message that I heard in church that January, our speaker noted that every trial is an opportunity to prove ourselves faithful to God.  He added that the more difficult the trial, the greater the opportunity to honor God by being faithful to Him.

So --  there is another aspect to "faithfulness".  Not only God's faithfulness to me, which is unfailing.  But my faithfulness to God.  Not only in trials, but in what may be even more challenging -- faithfulness in the everyday and sometimes discouraging tasks He has given me to do.   This faithfulness is something I need to work at in every area of my life when I so often feel like giving up. 

So I can be blessed and encouraged as I consider God's faithfulness to me every day.

And I can be challenged to live each day in faithfulness to Him and the things He has called me to do.  In 2020, all of this takes on additional meaning, don't you think?