To Encourage You

2 Thessalonians 3:3-5 “But the Lord is faithful. He will establish you and guard you against the evil one. And we have confidence in the Lord about you, that you are doing and will do the things that we command.  May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ.”

Philippians 2:13 “it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

Do you ever worry that you are failing in your walk as a believer? Are you ever disappointed as you look at how you’ve reacted about something, how you’ve been so anxious about some future situation, or how you’ve not shown the love that you should have to those around you?  Do you wonder if you’ll ever improve along these lines? Does it frustrate you?  Well, I can assure you that it frustrates me.  As Paul said, sometimes “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (Romans 7:15).   

But then I read verses such as those above and they renew my hope. You see, in the face of our own failings (and we all have them) we are assured that the Lord is faithful.  For those who truly love Him and sincerely want to follow Him, He won’t idly sit by and watch us fail.  No, He is faithful to us. He knows we are weak. He knows that as long as we are in these bodies that have been so affected by sin and possess these minds by which we can deceive our own selves, we will fail.  Yet, in the face of that failure, He is faithful to us. The very discontent we may have with our own failings is a sign of that, for we would be far worse off if our own sin didn’t bother us.  That’s the way the world is. That’s the sign of a seared conscience.   But our faithful God is faithful to check our spirits when we stray, and to help us see that there is a better way.  He is at work in us to give us the desire and the ability to work for His good pleasure.  Though Satan may tempt us to sin, and then tempt us further to great discouragement if we sin, God is faithful to guard us against the evil one.  Though we stumble, He is faithful to lift us up. Though our own weaknesses are exposed by such trials, God is faithfully at work to take what Satan means for evil and turn it around for our own good. It is by such trials that He shows us again and again that without Him we can do nothing.  We need Him each and every moment of every day.  And He has a way of reminding us of this when we might forget.  

Likewise, God is faithful in guiding our hearts towards obedience, which is the other side of the same coin.  We can be sure that when we disobey Him, He will be faithful to discipline us for “the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives” (Hebrews 12:6). And we can be sure that when God disciplines us, we know we’ve been disciplined. As with any good discipline, it has lasting results, for you see “He disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:10-11).  That’s the way of our loving and faithful God.  And it is in this process, as the Lord deals with us personally and intimately, that He “direct(s) (our) hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ” as the ultimate result of His faithful work in our lives.  

What an awesome God we serve, Who not only loves us, but works in us “both to will and to work for His good pleasure.”   That’s why Paul could express such confidence in the Thessalonian believers. It was because he had such great confidence in the God Who was at work in their lives. And that is our confidence, as well, for in the face of our failures, in the face of our frequent self-disappointment to live the life we ultimately so desire, we can place our confidence not in ourselves, but in the faithful One, the One Who is at work in us, and the One who is praying for us, just as He did for Peter, knowing full well that Peter would fail as Satan “sifted him like wheat.”  And what is His ultimate prayer for us?  It is the same as it was for Peter, and that is “that (our) faith may not fail” (Luke 22:32).