Faithfulness
In the prayerful Scripture that we’ve been studying over the past few weeks in I Thessalonians. Paul prays, 23 May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. We’ve learned that holiness begins with God’s peace. His Peace means wholeness and completeness. It’s sufficient, it’s all we need. His peace brings with it atonement and Atonement is the only ground of salvation, and that it is sufficient for every individual in the world today.
After we receive this peace through the atonement of Jesus Christ, we then are sustained by His grace. Receiving His grace is an everyday process. We learned that His grace is sufficient, we learned that this grace is transforming us from one degree of glory to another, and in the process of this graceful transition, Jesus is manifesting himself within us to the praise of His glorious grace. That grace is through faith in Jesus Christ alone.
He must serve us first, and serve us daily. Before we can ever rightly serve others. But then Paul finishes his prayer with one trustworthy reminder… he writes: 24 The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it. It’s an amazing reminder in our lives when we can say “God is faithful” and “we can wholeheartedly trust in Him.” There are times when as a minister I got to make tough decisions and even in the midst of those tough decisions, I must believe with a trusting heart that God is faithful.
Because, Faithfulness and trust go hand in hand but what we learn is that when it comes to trust and faithfulness, fear is standing in clear opposition as the chief enemy and divider of faithfulness and trust. Fear is the great immobilizer. Fear is what paralyzed the Israelite army before Goliath. An entire army stood still, over fearing one man. Fear from the disciples is what woke Jesus up in the middle of a storm.
Fear caused Peter to deny Jesus during the passion and fear has been the thorn in the side of the church that desires to move forward, but can not and will not because it has been paralyzed by fear. And when we let fear go unchecked in our lives, and we give it more rope in our lives and we place fear on our mantle of truth rather than faith… Fear will guide our thoughts, our decisions, our actions and even will decrease how much faith we put in Jesus Christ.
Paul says, The one who calls you is faithful. And he will do it. So the question isn’t, “is God faithful.” The question we must ask this morning is this, How do I trust in His faithfulness and walk in it by faith and not by fear? Let’s start with this: We recognize God’s faithfulness through a local church body living out His faithfulness towards one another. Meaning, “We overcome our fear and remain faithful by reassuring one another in the local church.
There are four main cords to the rope of faithfulness within the local church? Living a life of Gratitude - I am thankful for you. I mentioned a few sermons ago, I had begun to place at the end of my text messages and emails, Grateful. I am grateful. As I said, I do that on purpose. I am purposely living out and seeking to live a life of gratitude. It takes time.
The Lord is changing my attitude from selfishness and pride to one of being grateful and thankful. And that’s the first step of gratitude.. be intentional and put into practice. Trust me, when most people hear words of encouragement. The tone of their voice changes, their attitude changes. Recently, an Eighteen year-old photographer and student, Shea Glover, decided to "film “what I thought was beautiful." Without intending to, she has conducted an amazing social experiment on the effect of simple positivity and a compliment.
The reactions of those she videoed were perfect! Every person came into that photo shoot with what looked like a fake smile. As if they were hiding something. And they were… they were hiding their happiness, they were hiding their confidence. But during the shoot the photographer would say to them, you’re beautiful… and then she captured something amazing… with those three words, you are beautiful their face changed from uncertainty to raptured joy.
It’s so amazing to me how a little encouragement can become a chain reaction of praise and thankfulness. The Bible reminds us that “Gentle words bring life and health; a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit.” Pr. 15:4 “Kind words are like honey–sweet to the soul and healthy for the body.”pr. 16:24 A person's words can be life-giving water; words of true wisdom are as refreshing as a bubbling brook. Pr. 18:4 Unceasing Gratitude is what cultivates unity.
Gratitude helps people feel more positive, it builds a foundation of understanding and it builds confidence in one another to improve relationships. When it comes to unity and fellowship, Gratitude is what begins to build the threshold of relationship. It’s the porch to intentional relationships. If we’re looking for people to be a part of our live and to let us into thier lives, I begins with letting them know that the are worthy.
It begins by letting them know they matter and that they belong. Why not begin to build that doorway, the doorway into each other’s loves with appreciation. Fear in our life will have a way to exit when the door of gratitude is lived out within community. The second cord of faithfulness lived out within the church is fellowship. John piper writes: Fellowship is a mutual bond that Christian’s have with Christ that puts us in a deep, eternal relationship with one another.
So after gratitude, I am thankful for you. We put the practice of fellowship into place, I want to spend time with you. When alicia in 2004 began talking. That relationship began by spending 3 months on the phone encouraging one another. We would spend hours talking to one another through AIM, and we would video chat through MSN Messenger. She would have a bad day and I would be there to encourage her, and vice verse.
But the one thing that I believe drove our relationship closer was the desire to spend time in fellowship with each other. In the Greek language there is an interesting word called, Koi-known-ya. Koi - known - ya. Simply, koi-known-ia means fellowship. But it’s deeper than just fellowship. In the book of acts chapter 2 verse 42 that we read at our annual meeting. It says: “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship (koinonia), to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” But you can also find that word in two other places in the NT…
the 2nd book of Corinthians 9:13. “They will glorify God because of your submission flowing from your confession of the gospel of Christ, and the generosity of your contribution (koinonia) for them and for all others.” in Philippians 3:10 he writes: “That I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share (koinonia) his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” Acts focuses on relationship among believers, Corinthians used fellowship to express generosity within community, and Paul used koinonia to describe what connects us as a local body to God and what we share with one another, our faith in Christ.
So, koinonia can be simply defined like this: koinonia is Fellowship that is lived out in relationship between God and those of us who believe in Jesus and share new life with each other through Christ. It’s being intentional about showing up. Being present with one another. I love the fact that we can record our sermons and services online. I love the fact we can go live and give the world a taste of what we do here…
But it doesn’t and should never replaced intentional fellowship within these walls. We can’t as a local church live out koinonia by not being present and showing up to work out our salvation, to live out grace and forgiveness, and actively be people of gratitude with one another. Fear of fellowship will always drive us away from each other. Fear will always look for the individual to walk alone. But walking in fellowship will always build the foundation for a living community that seeks unity through the shared new life of being in Christ.
Thirdly, conquering the fear of faithfulness takes intentional empathy towards one another. There is one truth I have held near my heart as a christian and as a pastor. And it’s this: The world will never understand what we do and why we do it. There is no way the world can empathize with our calling to walk obedient lives to Jesus Christ and also to be led and to trust in the Holy Spirit.
However, one mark of our faithfulness should be, that within the fellowship of the church should be able to empathizes with one another. The world might not understand our faith, but we should as a family of faith be able empathize with one another. What empathy does is that it connects us to one another so that we know were not alone when we struggle. Empathy couples us to one another and we walk this faithful life in unity.
My favorite sociologist Brenee Brown once wrote: “Empathy has no script. There is no right way or wrong way to do it. It’s simply listening, holding space, withholding judgment, emotionally connecting, and communicating that incredibly healing message of ‘You’re not alone.’” Isn’t that what Jesus teaches us in our life? He tells us, my presence is with you.. You’re not alone. A few months ago I preached on compassion and there was a moment where Jesus had landed his boat and saw a large crowd, and he had compassion on them because they were like a sheep without a Shepard.
He said they were people confused and helpless. That means they were people who seems to be beaten down by life and every time they tried to get up they were beaten down again. And so, Jesus had compassion on them. What greater message than this, I Jesus, the Nazarene, from the town of the least of these, through the line of David, the least of the brothers of Jesse. I see you and My presence is with you…
You’re not alone. Compassion is like taking the Spiritual fruit of kindness (being friendly, generous and considerate), coupling it with empathy (the ability to understand and share the feelings of another) and that leads us to living out compassion… which means to suffer with another. I Know what you are going through.. you’re not alone. You see, compassion, Changes the way we live for God and for one another. There is no right or wrong way when it comes to compassion.
Just be present to bring presence. Just show up. Kerry Willis in his book Showing up said, “what we want is the privilege of relationship in our community.” If our primary purpose is to carry the presence of Christ in our lives, shouldn’t we be carrying him to others so that he can manifest himself within us and through us. Meeting the needs of our community, and our neighbors is the key that unlocks many more opportunities to love, to be a friend and to be there.
The only wrong way to compassion is not showing compassion at all. And that’s fear. Fear will drive you away from being compassionate towards others. Finally and lastly, blessing is the final part of casting the fear of faithfulness away from our lives. Gratitude, I am thankful for you. That’s the threshold, the porch and door into faithfulness. Fellowship, I want to spend time with you. That’s laying a solid foundation for unity.
Empathy, I know what you’re going through. That is intentionally walking in life and relationship with one another and understanding the walk and being compassionate towards one another. And blessing is saying, you are a blessing to me. How encouraging it is to receive a card from someone in the church, or a phone call from a pastor, or a text from myself, or a phone call, letter, email, text or visit from anyone in the church saying.
I’m praying for you. This week the Lord laid on my heart a family that’s very close to my heart. I texted them, I don’t want to sound weird, but I miss you. And i did. I fervently prayed for them to know the love of God this week. Yes, Shepards miss their flock. For those of you not here.. and watching online. you are missed and you are loved. Don’t make it a habit to stay at home, don’t make it a habit to not live out your faith within community.
Whether here or some were else, find a community to live your faith out in. And learn to see them as a blessing, not as a curse. Otherwise we will fall into the trap of fear, and disunity and unfaithfulness. It’s very easy for us to disconnect than to connect. It’s easier to live for ourselves and not for community. Do not let the enemy tell you that you do not belong.
Sometimes to overcome fear we need more than just compassion, gratitude and fellowship. We need to be reminded that those we love are blessings to us. You want a blessing… great. reach out to someone in the church. God has already provided you with a blessing, do we see others as a blessing? A church will grow not because of fancy programs. It will grow when we realize that Jesus has been the greatest blessing to us all, and we want to intentionally share him with one another.
Yes, That’s living out a life of faithfulness. For the most part, fear is what keeps us from living faithfully. Fear will always paralyze any effort for faithfulness. And fear within the people will eventually starve the people spiritually. So, as you leave here today ask yourself…. Where does my hope lie? Because if your hope is anchored in Christ, and you are attached to that anchor through, gratitude, fellowship, compassion and blessing, you will have nothing to fear.
Because 24 The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it. If his name is faithful, let our name be grateful. Amen. *