God Is Faithful

GOD is faithful. If my heart needs to be reminded of any truth right now, this is it. GOD is faithful. This is what God impressed upon my heart and my mind through my reading thus far this week. In Genesis 20, our patriarch Abraham commits a sin. He lies. He tells people in Gerar that his wife Sarah is his sister. If you're like me, you read that and have to re-read it because it just sounds so unbelievable. The great patriarch, the one who left his country at the age of 75 to go to a foreign land...he lied? This is the one who later will nearly sacrifice his only son, the son of promise, for God. WHY would Abraham lie? I kind of wanted to just go back in time and march up to him and say, "But, Abraham, in you I am going to be blessed. Don't do it. You have nothing to fear!"

Lying. We have all done it as some point in our lives. Why? Why does anyone lie? Because we're AFRAID. We are afraid someone will find out what we really are. We are afraid someone will hurt us. We are afraid we will get caught. We are afraid. When confronted by the king of Gerar, Abraham says: "Because I thought...they will kill me because of my wife." Whoa. Abraham was afraid. If he is afraid, then he is not exercising faith because fear and faith are opposites. It seems that somehow for some reason, Abraham's faith is weak at this point. Had he forgotten the promise? Had he forgotten the blessing? Had he forgotten the covenant? IDK.

What happens next, though, is even more amazing! Certainly, God could have rejected him for this lack of faith. We know he didn't. I found myself asking God why. Why didn't You reject Him? Why didn't You choose someone else? I think the answer is found in Genesis 15. God made a covenant with Abraham. God is faithful and will not break His covenant. Ever. He cannot because He is not a man that He should lie or change His mind.

One of the verses I have been committing to memory is Hebrews 11:8: By faith, Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was going. How is it that Abraham, whose faith faltered, is exalted for his faith and held up as an example for us to emulate? My conclusion is simply that GOD is faithful. We forget. We sin. We fail. We are faithless. But GOD! GOD is and always will be faithful. Abraham was able to be faithful for this one reason: GOD is faithful.

I have no idea what the future holds. I feel tempted to be anxious and afraid a lot. Especially now. Yet, I will set my hope fully upon God, this God, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the God who has adopted me into His family and called me His child, His beloved. I screw up all the time, but He is ever and always faithful.