Day 16: God Is Not Tired of Being Faithful

Are you tired of being faithful when you have been waiting a long time for answered prayer? Or, worse yet, have you given up on parts of being faithful because you feel discouraged or disillusioned? If so, beloved, I want to encourage you and challenge you today.

Friend, I know it is difficult to hang in there when the hanging is difficult. I know it’s hard to keep on keeping on, when all your flesh wants to do is throw in the towel and quit, give up, or walk away … or even drift slowly into the abyss of self-pity.

But, beloved, I want you to hear today that God is faithful–and that His faithfulness never ends. That means His faithfulness to you never ends, and that He is being faithful to you right now.

Yes, even when it doesn’t look like it. And even when you and I get tired of being faithful.

Friend, you can still count on God (despite what appearances try to tell you) because God is not tired of being faithful.

You and I may tend to get tired sometimes:

• Tired of getting up in the morning to spend time with God;
• Tired of praying and believing, even if we don’t see the answers yet;
• Tired of tithing and offering, even though the Bible clearly commands us to do both, without fail;
• Tired of maintaining a positive attitude, when we feel like crying instead;
• Tired of fasting and praying, when the breakthroughs we’ve been praying for still have not arrived.

You and I may get tired of being faithful to God, but God never gets tired of being faithful to us.

Sometimes we’re faithful and sometimes we’re not. To us, unfortunately (and sinfully), faithfulness seems like a cloak that we can put on and take off. We put it on and are faithful when we want, whenever it feels good and convenient; but we take off the cloak of faithfulness also when we want, when faithfulness no longer is easy or feels convenient.

But GOD is always faithful.

He can’t put on and take off His faithfulness like we can, and like we do. No; He is always faithful, and He will always be faithful to you. Faithful is Who He is, through and through. As we read in the book of 2 Timothy:

“This is a faithful saying:

For if we died with Him, we shall also live with Him.
If we endure, we shall also reign with Him.
If we deny Him, He also will deny us.
If we are faithless, He remains faithful;
He cannot deny Himself” (2 Timothy 2:11-13 NKJV).

Beloved, no matter what your circumstances are, Faithful is God’s very essence.

It is His DNA, if you want to think of it that way. If you could search all of God’s Person and look at Him even with a microscope, you would never find anything in Him that is not Faithful.

Yes, Faithful is Who He is, and He has no unfaithfulness in Him from which to form actions. He cannot be anything other than Who He is, and Who He is equals Faithful; so He can never be unfaithful to you or anyone else, not in the smallest little bit.

But we get tired of being faithful, and so we imagine that God’s faithfulness must lapse too–especially when He requires us to wait on Him.

When He asks us to wait on Him …

• For the provision that you need;
• For a new job;
• For a spouse, when you’re single and desire to get married;
• For the vision to be fulfilled;
• For a prayer to be answered;
• For a loved one to be saved …

Somehow, we start believing and imagining that God has somehow overlooked us. We begin feeling sorry for ourselves, thinking that God has not heard our prayer, or that He is ignoring us.

But you know what He says about that? Look at Isaiah chapter 40:

This Scripture perfectly quotes the struggle of many believers.

When God asks us why we say that our way is hidden from the Lord, and that He has passed over our just claim, He’s asking us why we think He doesn’t see us–and why we think that He is ignoring our real needs and heartfelt, righteous prayers.

Because God would never ignore our needs or our heartfelt, righteous prayers. And He could never fail to see us. His eye is on the sparrow, and He watches you every moment of every day. You sleep, but God never slumbers or sleeps. He is ALWAYS seeing you in every intimate detail and watching over you to protect you, to boot.

But we feel sorry for ourselves because things sometimes take longer than we prefer …

… and, very often, and unfortunately, we drift down into self-pity and cease being faithful.

But you know what? God has not forgotten you. And with Him, a thousand years is as a day, and a day is as a thousand years.

God is not bound by time, and He can and will come through for you in an instant, without even a moment’s notice … even if you have been waiting for the answer to your prayers and promises a long time.

After all, He explicitly promises that your vision WILL come, and it will not tarry:

“Then the Lord answered me and said:

“Write the vision and make it plain on tablets, that he may run who reads it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time; but at the end it will speak, and it will not lie. Though it tarries, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.

Behold the proud, his soul is not upright in him; but the just shall live by his faith” (Habakkuk 2:2-4 NKJV).

And I know it’s hard sometimes.

I’m preaching to myself as well as to you, because I have been praying and fasting and praying and fasting and believing and sowing and praying and declaring and contending for some things for YEARS, and for other things for months, and for other things for days … but I want them all NOW, like anybody would; and they are all good things, good works, good seeds in the Kingdom, good blessings that the Bible promises.

Do I know why God has waited to bring those promises into fulfillment? No.

Am I a lot further along now than I used to be in all of those areas? Yes.

Do I wish I was all the way along, walking in the fullness of every answered prayer, with absolutely no more waiting necessary? You betcha.

But God, in His wisdom, sees fit to have us wait sometimes.

And we are to continue praying and interceding and believing and fasting and tithing and sowing and declaring and all of that, the entire time, even while God has us in the waiting period. Consistent and persistent asking and faith-filled petitions together comprise what Jesus defines as “faith,” according to Luke 18:

God will avenge you speedily, but you do have to wait sometimes for the moment of His avenging to get here.

During that time, you have to wait. And friend, if you cease being faithful in the waiting period, God will allow you to wander in the wilderness until you end up deciding to get back on God’s train and remain faithful to Him, no matter what.

He cannot affirm our unfaithfulness with His blessing; He’s too good of a Father for that. So when people get down into the doldrums of self-pity, God waits until we turn back to Him with all our hearts before He can send that blessing we are asking Him to give us.

(Ask me how I know. Unfortunately, I have too much personal experience with self-pity. God is curing me of it, step by step; but it’s been a very long process. So I am talking from both the Word and the witness of my personal experience here.)

See, if we have to have a THING in order to be faithful to God, then we have an idol in our hearts.

For example:

• If I have to feel not stressed about money in order to tithe, then by definition I have said that I will only obey God if I have enough money–and money is higher on my ladder of priorities than God is. That makes money an idol.
• If I have to have a new job in order to maintain a righteous attitude before the Lord, then my finances, emotional safety, security, self-sufficiency, and stability are higher on my ladder of priorities than the Lord is. That makes the job an idol.
• If I have to have a certain prayer answered in visible manifestation in order to keep on believing God, then SELF (“what I want”) is higher on my priority list than trusting God is. That makes “self” my idol.

God, have mercy.

Friend, God is not tired of being faithful. He cannot ever get tired of being faithful, and He cannot be anything other than faithful.

But, are you tired of being faithful? And have you allowed yourself to stop being faithful because of your tiredness?

If so, I urge you to take a moment right now and rededicate yourself to the Lord:

• Confess your unfaithfulness to Him, and repent for it.
• Ask Him to forgive you, to cover you with the blood of Jesus, and to fill you with His Holy Spirit anew and afresh in every place of your body, soul, heart, and spirit.
• Re-commit your way to the Lord. Ask Him for help to be faithful to Him and obey His commands, no matter what it costs you in effort, perseverance, spiritual fortitude, labor, time, talent, or treasure.

And then go out and ACT, doing the faithful things that you have not been doing–and for the absence of which the Lord just led you to repent!

Beloved, God is not tired of being faithful to you.

He is faithful now; He was faithful in the past; and He will always be faithful. Even if you don’t see everything that you want to see quite yet, He is still faithful. Let that truth encourage you today, and decide today that you are going to meet His faithfulness with your own faithfulness to Him, by His grace–and by the power of His Holy Spirit!

Did you need to hear this message today? Is Holy Spirit convicting you right now? If so, leave a comment below!