Faithfulness Always Wins!

By Sue Chess

     Executive Director

Eight years ago today, my wonderful Dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  Forty-eight short days later he would breathe his last labored breath with his family around him as we listened to the Gaither Band sing about Heaven.  I can’t believe my “Dado” has been gone that long!  It seems like yesterday—it seems like forever.  He is buried in the country cemetery on the hill above our summer cabin which is affectionately dubbed “The Schoolhouse”—because that’s what it was over 100 years ago.  My Dad was outspoken and opinionated (that may be where I get it from—sorry, friends)!  His faith in God, his faithful life, his constant love—all of these things helped to shape my belief about God and about life. 

Louie Giglio makes the statement that faithfulness always wins.  He also said that you don’t have to know everything about the mountain to take the next step. If you are faithful you keep going when circumstance get hard.  Even when life fails you—you win because you don’t fail life.  The guiding mantra of my life has been “just do the next right thing.”  How much of that started by watching it modeled in my Dad for most of his life?

It’s hard to imagine what Dad’s reaction would be to what our world has become!  He always spoke his mind but somehow communicated that he loved you and loved life at the same time.  No one got angry with him somehow even though that index would come up as he’d make his point. 

Dad proved Mr. Giglio’s statement that faithfulness always wins when he faced death with courage.  I peeked around the corner as he had one of his last “heart to hearts” with Mom instructing her to lock her doors at night and hold to the faith.  He was quick to tell the nurse that he’d be getting a new body soon, and indeed he has.

 

Here at Care Net we watch our clients face some of the hardest circumstances you can imagine.  Even as this was being written, one client faced a positive pregnancy test knowing she has an abusive boyfriend—now what?  Circumstances can completely obliterate your understanding of how to remain faithful—where’s the next step?  How do you keep going when life gets that hard?  I guarantee you know the very next thing.  It has never failed to present itself when the mountain (circumstance) is faced. Faithfulness is a combining of belief with behavior. 

You take the very first righteous step towards it and God empowers you for the next one.  That is how faithfulness always wins.  Proverbs 3:3-4 “Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you; bind them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart. So you will find favor and good success in the sight of God and man.” 

Such a simple verse, but so challenging to walk it out!  Remembering that faithfulness always wins, take the first step in the right direction.  Then the next.