We often sing songs about how God is faithful. I wonder what we have in mind as we sing those songs, or when we repeat the line “you’re never gonna let me down.”? It’s tempting to think primarily in those terms, that God is faithful and so we can trust him with our dreams, aspirations and desires. In one sense, that’s true. However, it can risk an introverted understanding of God. Primarily, God is faithful to himself, to his name, to his character and therefore to his covenant.
Recently we attended the 130th anniversary of Bearwood Chapel’s building. It was a good opportunity to look back and celebrate God’s faithfulness. There was quite a small church. Even at times when they have experienced numerical blessing, they never got really big in UK national terms. However, God has constantly worked through the church over the years. We heard stories of people brought to faith. There was a missionary family who went to serve in China during the Boxer revolution and were later martyred, a dad, mum and child killed with only one daughter surviving. We heard of another missionary (who we had still been actively supporting when I was at Bearwood). She had gone to India as a medical missionary and stayed long after her official retirement. She died there, this year, in ger 90s. She finished life with her bank account empty, little possessions to hand on but a church full of testimonies at her funeral.
My own experience during our time at Bearwood was of seeing people coming to us and then being sent on or sent back to serve the Lord in the US, France, Austria, the Netherlands, South Africa, Egypt, Israel and so on.
What was happening? We could talk about God’s faithfulness, keeping a church going over those years through tough times and good. However, really the story was about God being faithful to his covenant and to his mission. It was his Gospel that was being served.
As it happens, that’s a good thing too. Just as John Piper is right to argue that God’s enjoyment of himself is the best news and CS Lewis was right to argue that God’s love for himself was good because God focuses on that which is perfect and of highest worth. So, too God’s faithfulness to himself is good because it is a faithfulness to the one unchanging thing. That’s the kind of dependable God that we need. We finished the service by singing “Great is thy faithfulness”. It was a reminder again, “There is no shadow of turning in thee.” It’s God’s unchanging character that matters and gives us hope
Faithroots 