Episode 15: How Should We Live If God Really Is Faithful?

We say God is faithful all the time.
But most of us still live like everything depends on us.

We stress about the future.
We try to control outcomes.
We assume something is wrong when things take longer than we expected.

So what would actually change if we believed God is faithful?

In this episode, we look at what Scripture shows about God’s faithfulness and how it should shape the way we live. Not just what we believe, but how we make decisions, how we handle uncertainty, and how we walk through seasons that don’t make sense yet.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to Rooted with Emily Talento, where we explore who Jesus is through context, culture, and covenant. I hope your week has been going well. I had a great week. I was at Liberty University for an event, and while there, we thought it would be fun to do some Bible trivia with Liberty University students. I don't think I realize that Liberty is the largest Christian university in the entire world. And it was pretty fun to get to go around campus and talk to students, see what their thoughts were on both silly, funny things regarding like Bible trivia, and then also more serious things. And so at this point that you're watching this, there may be a video out. If not, it will be coming soon. So I'm excited for you to see that. But today we're going to be talking about God's faithfulness one last time officially. Obviously, God's faithfulness is something that we'll talk about forever. In probably most episodes, it will come up. But the last few weeks we've been really zoning in on that attribute of him specifically, because if we can't trust his faithfulness, then we can't really trust anything else about him. So being that this is our last episode in this section on God's faithfulness before we pivot to a different topic, I thought it would be good if we end on a very practical, relevant note. So we've been talking about different facets of his faithfulness. Assuming that's all true, assuming we believe that he is faithful. How should that change how we live? Does it? Do we live with the understanding that God is faithful? Because truthfully, I would argue that most of us live like we're carrying the weight of the world. Like everything depends on us. Like the future is fragile. That's not living in his faithfulness. So today's anchor is this idea that I've talked quite a lot about. I'm sure I'll continue to talk quite a lot about. But this idea that God's faithfulness is rooted in his character. It's rooted in who he is. So I don't want to jump ahead. But let's, before we, because I can feel myself about to go on a tangent, before we do that, I want to read the verse that we are going to be in today. We're going to be in Lamentations, chapter 3, verses 20 through 22, right? No, 22 through 24. Now, this is one of my favorite passages in the whole Bible, because the paradox of it is extreme. So some context. Lamentations was written by Jeremiah right after the destruction of Jerusalem. Now, this is essentially the end of the world. This is Jeremiah's entire, not just his entire life, because it's so much more significant than that, right? This is the city that's the dwelling place of God. Like, this is the promise. Like you have to know that this isn't just, okay, the destruction of some random city. This is the destruction of a city that's been built on thousands of years of promises up until this point. It's so profound. And so, and it's not just like kind of bad, it's really bad. If you read their Lamentations, there's horrible, horrible scenes depicted. One of which is it's it's in chapter four, I believe, or chapter five, but the people are so hungry, there's nothing to eat. The mothers are forced to eat their dead babies because there's like it is brutal. And in the midst of all of this horrible, horribleness, Jeremiah writes one of the most beautiful passages in the whole Bible. Okay. We're gonna look at verses 22 through 24. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul. Therefore I will hope in him. Okay. Like it's the end of the world. Legitimately. The world is essentially over, their world is over, and this is what Jeremiah is writing. Really? What does it tell us? Well, it tells us that God's faithfulness isn't dependent on our circumstances, which we know. How many times do we have to talk about it? How many times, like that's a head knowledge thing, but I think we struggle to get that from a head knowledge thing to an actual heart knowledge experience thing, right? Because it's easy to say, of course, God's faithfulness isn't dependent on my circumstances. But it's very different when we're in a situation where things are not going our way to make excuses. We all have situations in our lives that are not going the way we want them to necessarily. And so, in those experiences, in those areas where we may be frustrated, how do we still live in his faithfulness? And we could see it played out in this passage, right? Let's go back. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. The Lord is my portions as my soul, therefore I will hope in him. God's faithfulness isn't dependent on circumstances. And like again, we just said it. His steadfast love, his new mercies, his faithfulness itself, and the fact that he is our portion. That's one of my favorite verses. Because it points to this idea that even when there's lack, even when there's need, even when we're not getting what we want per se, whatever that may be, he is enough in that. So today to keep things super practical, we're gonna look at four different facets of if God is faithful, then blank. So for example, number one, if God is faithful, we obey even when outcomes are unclear. Now, this is a theme that we could see throughout the entire Bible. And if your life is anything like my life, then you could probably see it throughout your life as well. This idea that God's not going to give me five steps, he's not even gonna give me two in most cases. He's just gonna give me the very next one, and he is asking me to trust him in that. Now, we could see this with Moses. God told him to leave his father's home, to leave everything that he knew to go to a land that was not his. And Abraham was obedient to that. And again, we talked about this before. That's even an extreme example because Abraham didn't even really know our God at that point. There wasn't all of this track record or history or even scripture for him to go to to be like, okay, so even though I'm not seeing your faithfulness now, I don't really know who you are, but I'm going to rely on what I know to be true. He didn't have any of that. So that was Abraham. Moses, God told to go to Pharaoh, even though that was probably a very, very, very challenging thing for him to do. I'm sure we all have seasons of our lives that we would rather not revisit. But for God to ask Moses to go revisit this previous season of his life in this capacity, demanding that Pharaoh lets the Hebrews go, like that is crazy. And then another example we see is through the disciples. They didn't really know what Jesus was about. In fact, they thought what he was about was different. They Jesus came preaching the fact that the kingdom of heaven is at hand, and they thought that was a physical kingdom. They thought that that meant he was going to overthrow Rome. Like they thought it meant something very tangible. That's literally not what it meant at all. And so to kind of see their understanding of Jesus unfold as they were walking in obedience with him is something that I think God asks all of us to do. Okay, maybe it's not going to be that profound in that way, that clear, but I think that there's a sense of we're not gonna know steps two, three, four, and so on and so forth. And I think in many cases, if God did give us the next steps beyond our very next one that we're supposed to take, I think it would freak us out. It would be too much. And God knows that, and he only gives us the very next for a reason. Now, in each of these examples that I named, they didn't move because they knew the outcome, they moved because they trusted that God was faithful. Number two, if God is faithful, we don't have to control everything. Now this is hard because we in our human nature love control. We love certainty, we love guarantees, we love predictable results. But that's not what we see throughout scripture. The only I saw an Instagram video about this, I can't even take credit for it. The only control that God calls us to is self-control. So much of the Christian faith, the Christian walk is dying to self. What does that dying to self actually mean? It means giving up control. It's saying my desires are dead. That's uncomfortable. That's not convenient. That's not something that in most cases the average person's gonna choose just because it's fun or easy. There's also an element of dying to control, dying to self is the absolute least I can do for what he's done for me. I don't know what I'm doing. I can't see the whole picture. I could see like a fraction of a fraction of what's happening, and somehow I'm gonna have faith in myself. No way. It's it's like a false sense of security. It's a false sense of confidence. I could think of all the times that I have relied on my own understanding or my own sense of control, or like really fought for my own control in it in given situations, and it never plays well because there's just so much we're missing. Scripture calls us to something different than our natural being. It calls us to obedience. Now, that's our responsibility. Obedience is it. The outcome is God's responsibility. And how much of a weight is lifted off if all we're asked to do is show up each day seeking Him, living faithfully to what He's called us to in that day specifically. I don't know what next week looks like or next year, but I do know that I'm responsible for how I'm living today. And that's it. That is all I have to do. It's not easy, but it does release some of the pressure that I feel like we're carrying for no reason, even though God has never asked us to. He actually asks the opposite, that we give him our burdens. I I don't know where it gets lost for us, but it's it's so much easier of a concept to understand mentally than to actually live out. So let's jump to number three. If God is faithful, then waiting doesn't mean that something's wrong. Now, this is another really tough one because in our modern culture, we equate delay to failure. But that's not the story we see throughout the Bible. I mean, we've talked about this extensively. How it took generations and generations for God to fulfill his promises. How it took over 600 years between God promising to Abraham the descendant's land and blessing before they inherited the land. That's an insane amount of time. If things are delayed for any amount of time for us, a few minutes, a few days, a few weeks, a few months, we're losing our minds. But the Bible shows a very different reality. I mean, we've talked about this. This idea that it took generations for God to fulfill his promises to Abraham. There was purpose in all of it. But if you talk to any person in the middle of the story and ask them, has God failed? They very reasonably could have said yes because of where they were sitting, because they didn't see the ending result yet. Did that mean that God wasn't faithful? No, of course not. They were just in the middle of the story. In the same way that in many cases in our own lives where we question God's faithfulness, it's not that he's not faithful. It's just the story is still being written. It's still playing out in real time. Waiting isn't proof that God isn't working. In many cases, I mean, we could talk about scripture, but we could even look at our own lives. Like I could speak from my own personal experience. The seasons of waiting are often where I, first of all, learn the most. I grow closer to God in those seasons more than getting the things that I want. So that way when I do eventually get the things that I want, it's not in vain. I'm better because of it. Not that the waiting's fun ever, actually. In many cases, it's very painful and horrible, but there's purpose in it. And I can't think of a waiting period that I've experienced that I'm not thankful for. Would I want to relive all of them? No. But I'm very aware that God has made good on all of them. So I trust that in current waiting seasons that that's still true. This gives perspective to current waiting. Because we all have different things we're waiting on, right? But I encourage you that in your season of waiting, whatever that looks like, that you're asking God what He's trying to teach you in it. Because I know people who got what they wanted without learning the lesson that God had for them. And it's never pretty because the lesson still will be learned, but now the cost is much, much higher. I also want to be careful to note that God isn't withholding things from us because we have to perform or get to a certain level of understanding because then that becomes works-based, it's performative, it's completely against who our God is. However, that being said, I want to be in the best place to receive the gifts that he has for me. In many cases of waiting, what I find the number one thing he wants to teach us is reliance on him, dependence on him, that we don't really need anything else. We ultimately just need him. And so in those seasons of waiting, if that's the outcome, if that's what I walk away with a greater understanding of, then it will never be in vain. And then when I eventually do get the things I want, then there isn't a level of confusion of priorities. He's the main thing. Right? That's what it says in verse 24. And then whatever else he decides to give us out of his goodness for his glory, that's that's gravy, that's extra. And last but not least, number four, if God is faithful, we remember instead of panic. Now, this is something we've talked quite a lot about because the Bible talks quite a lot about it, but we as humans are inclined to forget. That's just our natural state. The Bible calls us to remember to speak truth over. Because when people forget God's faithfulness, we panic. And we could see that throughout scripture. God rescued the Israelites from Egypt, He provided for them in water, in food, in all of these ways, right? As soon as they forgot, what do they do? They panic, they build a golden calf. And as much as I want to judge them, because it happened very quickly, and say, wow, that's so crazy. How could you forget? I forget within five seconds if I'm not constantly reminding myself of what God has previously already done. So I really have no right to judge. Another example is the disciples. They're watching Jesus perform miracles, they're watching him take care of them. And as soon as they forget, immediately panic sets in. And I'm sure we can even look at our own lives and recall examples of that. Remembering stabilizes our faith. And so coming up with ways to remember, I think scripture memory verses are huge. Because if they're living up there, then they could be recalled, right? You can't recall something you don't know. Another example of something that I think is super helpful in remembering is getting in the habit, I mentioned it before, of speaking truths over situations. Our minds might logically understand God's faithfulness. But our hearts and feelings might not be on the same page. It sometimes takes us to continue to repeat truth to ourselves to override our feelings. Because if we're not doing that, then in many cases we're panicking. And when we panic, we oftentimes make really dumb choices. It's just a reality. It says, Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. Now, because God is faithful, we hold fast, continue trusting, continue obeying, and continue hoping, even in the middle of the story, even when we're not confident of the outcome, even when we don't know what's next. So to bring it back to the core question of the episode, if God is really faithful, how should that change how we live today? Maybe it's less fear of tomorrow, less pressure to control everything, more willingness to obey even when the outcome is unclear, greater perspective in seasons of waiting, whatever it is, what we can rest confidently in is this idea that our God keeps his promises. And we can see that throughout scripture, and we could see that throughout our own lives. We can trust him because he is faithful. I want to thank you for joining me for today's episode. It means the world to me that you are here. If you enjoyed it, if you could like, comment, subscribe, do any of the things you would normally do for any of the other podcasts that you like, I'd really appreciate it. You could also follow me on Instagram at Emily Talento and at rooted with Emily Talento. Again, I'd really appreciate that as well. I hope you have a great weekend, and I'll see you next time.