Latest / The Daily Word / April 1 - The Faithfulness of God
Transcript
- Cory Barnes: Well, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, good wee hours of the night and welcome to the Daily Word podcast from Lakeshore Christian Fellowship. My name is Corey and it is my privilege to serve as our Catawba campus pastor. I'm excited to be sitting down with you for another daily word episode where we are going to be diving into the scriptures, seeing what inspiration we can get out of that and how to apply that to our lives. And today is April the first and our reading comes from second Corinthians chapter one. Now, before we get to that, let's just look at the context that second Corinthians as being written in. Now this is the second letter in our Bibles that was written to Corinth. Paul had planted the Church of Corinth during one of his missionary journeys ⁓ and then he traveled on and continued ministering at other places. Now ⁓ somewhere along line during those travels he heard about some issues that were going at Corinth. So he wrote ⁓ the book of 1 Corinthians to address some of those issues, bring some corrections. The sad news is after 1 Corinthians, the church at Corinth actually rejected his correction and beyond that they even started rejecting him. So after that, to start addressing those issues that sprang up, Paul visited them and then wrote them another letter. Now that letter's lost to time. We don't have it. You could think of it as first Corinthians 1.5 or 1B or something, but it's gone. We don't have it. We just have first and second Corinthians. And by the time he sits down to write second Corinthians, a lot of the church at Corinth had decided to repent. Their hearts had softened and they were ready to reconcile with Paul. And Paul wants to reconcile with them as well. But before he does that, there's still some more things he needs to get off his chest, some more corrections that he needs to bring on before their relationship can be fully restored and move forward. Part of the tension here is that group of leaders had moved in, false apostles who were trying to take the church, trying to take leadership. and they were undermining Paul's authority, And somewhere along the way, apparently, ⁓ between ⁓ all that going an area of tension had popped up ⁓ that, ⁓ told you ⁓ Corinth once and wrote them a letter, but apparently his initial plan had been to visit them twice. ⁓ And he had told I'm gonna come. on my way to Macedonia and I'm gonna come and visit you again when I'm leaving. But then Paul had a change in travel plans and he decided to write them a letter instead of that second visit. And people were looking at that change in plans and they were deciding, that must mean that Paul's fickle. That must mean that he says yes when he means no and he says no he means yes. ⁓ So before Paul really gets into the meat of what he is trying to address here with the church at Corinth, he explains his reasoning about why he is changing his plans. That explanation comes in chapter two, but he wants to make it super clear that he wasn't being fickle. He wasn't being unreliable. And more importantly than all that, before he gives his explanation, he pauses at the end of chapter one to make sure that the church of Corinth wasn't taking that same feeling of unreliability that they felt with Paul and projecting that on to God. Paul wanted them to know that regardless of the human leaders in their life and their failings and their stumblings, that God is entirely consistent even when the people who follow him are inconsistent. He does not say yes when he means no, and he does not say no when he means yes. So we're gonna look at what Paul has to say here before he even gets into defending himself. And that comes out of 2 Corinthians 1.20, reading from the NIV today. For no matter how many promises God has made, there are yes in Christ, and through him the amen is spoken by us to the glory of God. See, Paul makes it super clear that God is faithful and whatever promises he makes, we can hang our hat on. We can go and we can run with them. We can say amen or so be it when he makes a promise. That is how rock solid we can be in his faithfulness. So let's get to the application of today's devotion. So Let me ask you a question. Have you ever been let down by a Christian leader you respected? A pastor, a mentor, maybe a small group leader? Most of us have. The reality is that no matter how gifted or anointed or used by God someone is, they are still human. And every human is capable of failure. of letting other humans down, of being inconsistent. We don't know the future, so we may say that we're going to do something and then circumstances change and then we can't. All kinds of things happen. But the problem is that when we lose faith in people, we'll often lose faith in God. And we have to make sure that that isn't happening. We have to make sure that leader's failure doesn't quietly plant a little seed in our heart that's saying, ⁓ they let me down, how do I know God won't? So let's just take some time and reflect. Let's and let's examine our hearts with the Lord. father had the failure of others, people who are probably well-meaning but flawed humans, have those caused me to have doubt in your faithfulness. And if he brings something to mind, let's just take a moment to confess that. Father, I am sorry that when they did this, it made me doubt you. It made me question your goodness. Will you forgive me for that? Will you help me to see your faithfulness and wipe all that away? And after that, we can affirm our trust in him with a proclamation of faith. After all, Paul said through him, the amen is spoken by us to the glory of God, meaning that when God shows us his faithfulness, our response is to be yes, amen. So be it, Lord. I trust your faithfulness. I have faith in you. So be it. Father God, we thank you that you are entirely and utterly faithful, that regardless of the faults and failings of those around us, we can trust you that you are unchanging, you are unmoved, you are good, and you are faithful. And when you promise something to us, no matter how long it takes for that promise to be fulfilled, we can trust that you're going to do it. Lord, we repent for any area in our life where we have... allowed the failings of humans to get in the way of our relationship with you. We pray that you would wash us clean, that you would wipe away our doubt and forgive us for our sins, that you would wash us white as snow so that we can continue our journey with you. Lord, we thank you for your faithfulness. We declare, so be it to the promises that you have in our life. We love you, Jesus, and we're so thankful. that every day we come to your word, you start opening it up and you start revealing things to us that help us to continue growing closer to you. We praise your holy name in the name of Jesus, amen.