TLIC PROVERBS. FEBRUARY 2: FAITHFULNESS.

Proverbs 3:3. Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you; bind them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart.

Yesterday we talked about God’s hesed. His steadfast, loyal, covenant love.

Today we will talk about God’s faithfulness, his emet.

The Hebrew word emet can also be translated as truth. God’s faithfulness is his complete honesty with you. God will always tell you the truth. Most importantly God will always tell you the truth about yourself and your sin. God will faithfully wound you until you come to your senses about your own wicked ways. If “faithful are the wounds of a friend,” then God is your best friend.

How do you see your trials and your suffering? What category do you put them in? Are they proof that God has given up on you, stopped caring about you, or that he is vindictive against you because of your sin?

Or are your trials, testings, sufferings, and even your temptations the faithful working of God in your heart and mind against your deadly self-reliance, and self-righteousness? Are they God’s way of revealing the truth about you to you?

Make no mistake, God is not letting you get away with any level of sin. Rather he is faithfully confronting, convicting, and chastising us back into his loving arms. How? Through our union with Christ.

Jesus, talked about truth a lot. He said, “I am the truth,” and “The truth will set you free.” How does God tell us the truth about who we are and about our sin? Through our union with the cross of Christ. The cross is brutally honest with us all about how evil we actually are. We’re so evil that God had to die for us. We’re so helpless that only Jesus dying for us could save us.

But out union with Christ’s cross is also brutally honest about how loved we are. Yes, God had to die for us, but also God DID die for us. Willingly. Without hesitation. Without regret.

When we know the truth about our sin but also God’s love, we can begin to allow God’s faithful discipline to do its work in our lives – convicting of sin, but also carrying us back to the Father who loves us with a faithful, and true love that will never lie and never let go.

You: How do you see your trials and testings?

You in Christ: Do you trust that everything God allows in your life is his faithfulness toward you?

Christ in you: How might you receive testing the way Christ did? In faith.

Pray: Father, you will always tell me the truth. The cross is my truth. The truth of my sin and the truth of your love for me in Christ. Help me to trust you even in the darkest of days. Amen.