Although we are unfaithful, God is faithful in His purpose; we need to see God’s faithfulness in fulfilling His economy and realize that He is faithful to remove our idols and bring us back to Himself as the fountain of living waters.
The books of Jeremiah and Lamentations show us both how we are unfaithful to God and forsake Him as the fountain of living waters to run after idols, and also how God is faithful – oh, great is His faithfulness!
We all have to admit that, even though we love the Lord, we love His word, and we love the brothers and the sisters, our heart is so attached to things, matters, persons, and situations, and we have idols in our heart.
We may not call them idols, but we may be so consumed with our passion for sport, youtube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, cooking, travelling, writing, etc – you name it, there’s an idol supermarket in the world, and there are many things that appeal to us and become our idols.
We may not love something in the morning, but by the end of the day we are fully in love with it; our heart is deceitful, and in our fallen human being we cannot be changed.
But our God is faithful to expose our idols, to deal with them, and even to remove them, so that we may return to Him as the fountain of living waters to drink of Him and feed on Him.
Because we have idols in our heart, when we seek God we do not find Him, when we read His word we don’t hear His speaking, and when we pray, our prayers are not answered.
God demands nothing less than 100% from us, our whole heart, our full love, and our full being to be focused on Him; if we take anything or anyone else as the focus of our being, God is faithful in His purpose to deal with that thing, to judge it, and to bring us back to Himself as our Husband, our source, our fountain of living waters.
God knows that our idols cause us to be estranged from Him, our real Husband; God should be the only One for us, but our heart sticks to and follows so many other things, so God in His faithfulness deals with things and with our heart to cause us to return to Him.
Having a Spiritual Understanding of God’s Faithfulness in Fulfilling His Economy
May we realize that our God is faithful and may we see God’s faithfulness in fulfilling His economy (Lam. 3:23).
God never gives up His economy; even though we are unfaithful to Him and forsake Him to worship idols, even setting up idols in our heart, God is faithful, and He will work something out.
No matter how much we, His wife, His lover, are unfaithful to Him, He is a faithful God.
We would not be here if it were not for God’s faithfulness; it’s not that we’re stronger or more zealous – we still pursue the Lord and love Him because God is faithful to call us into the fellowship of His Son.
We trust in Him and we feed on His faithfulness.
God’s mercies are new, His compassions never fail, and they are new every morning; great is His faithfulness.
There’s a well-known hymn that says, “Great is Thy faithfulness / Great is Thy faithfulness / Morning by morning new mercies I see. / All I have needed Thy hand hath provided; / Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me” (Hymns #19).
When we sing this hymn we may be filled with love for the Lord and we may have a deep appreciation of His faithfulness; however, we may understand what this hymn says about God’s faithfulness either in a natural way or in a spiritual way.
If we understand God’s faithfulness in a natural way, we may think that God is faithful primarily in the matter of material provisions or physical blessings; many believers (and unbelievers also) think this way.
However, this is God’s faithfulness according to our natural understanding, not according to what He is.
1 Cor. 1:9 says that God is faithful in calling us into the fellowship of His Son; however, to our natural understanding it may not seem that God is faithful in caring for our welfare.
If we look at the Lord Jesus, we see that God was faithful toward Him, yet it didn’t seem like the Lord had a lot of material things or prosperity, and He did not have a good life outwardly speaking.
Similarly with the apostle Paul; he was called by God, and God commissioned, burdened, and sent him, but wherever he went and did the work of God, he had troubles.
As soon as Paul started to preach Christ, he began to suffer persecution. One time he had to escape a city by being lowered down the wall in a basket (Acts 9:15-16, 23-25).
Does this mean that God was not faithful to Paul? No, God was faithful, and Paul knew God’s faithfulness in His economy, but God’s faithfulness is not according to our natural understanding (see 2 Cor. 11:30-33; Col. 1:24; 2 Cor. 1:5; Phil. 3:10; Rev. 1:9; 2 Tim. 2:10; 3:12).
If we look at our own situation, when we believed into the Lord Jesus, we might have expected to have outward peace and blessing, and we thought that He will make sure all is well with us and we will have prosperity.
However, instead of this, many times we have troubles, and we may even lose our security, our health, or our possessions.
When some Christians experience such things, they may question God’s faithfulness; they may ask why didn’t God prevent the hardships from happening to them (Acts 14:22; 1 Thes. 3:25).
In the Old Testament we see Job, one of the most righteous men in the eyes of Jehovah; though he was righteous, he lost everything – his possessions, his children, and even his health.
Is God faithful?
We must apprehend God’s faithfulness in a spiritual way, realizing that God is faithful in allowing these things in our experience which are seemingly negative, sufferings, trials, tribulations.
We may have thought that when we believe into the Lord, He is faithful to bless us with all kinds of things, but when we see these negative things happening, we may doubt His faithfulness…
Yes, God is faithful; in fact, even through our troubles and sufferings His faithfulness is manifested, for it is through these afflictions and sufferings that we are brought into full salvation and even into the eternal glory with Christ!
God is faithful to us in His economy to remove anything that we still rely on, anything we still desire and love more than Him, so that we may love Him, enjoy Him, and cling to Him alone!
So it is through the means of these negative things that He will rid our lives from idols, so that He alone would be our only possession and enjoyment, so that He may truly become our fountain of living waters for us to drink. Isn’t this faithfulness?
We praise You Lord for Your faithfulness toward us. Hallelujah, God is faithful in fulfilling His economy, and He is faithful toward us, even though we are not faithful. Lord, we trust in You and we feed on Your faithfulness in Your economy. Even though we may not understand why things are happening, even though we may not agree with the suffering, troubles, and trials, we know that You are faithful. Thank You Lord for being faithful to bring us all the way into full salvation and into eternal glory with Christ, even by means of the sufferings, trials, and tribulations. Amen, Lord, have Your way in us according to Your faithfulness so that we may be rid of all our idols for You to be our only possession and enjoyment, so that we may truly drink of You as our only fountain of living waters!
God is Faithful in His Purpose to Turn us from Idols and bring us back to Himself to Drink of Him
May the Lord grant us to have a spiritual understanding of God’s faithfulness so that we may realize that, in allowing us to have troubles and sufferings, God is faithful in His purpose to turn us back from idols and bring us back to Himself.
We are just like the people of Israel – our heart can stick to so many things, and we may pursue after, love, and worship many idols, even without knowing or realizing this.
For example, our peace, our safety, our health, and our possessions may become idols to us, but God is faithful to take these things again so that we may drink of Him as the fountain of living waters.
We may be anxious for the things of this life; we may be consumed by anxiety, and this anxiety can be an idol.
Some may be possessed or obsessed by this anxiety for legitimate things of life, and anxiety becomes an idol, for they are occupied and possessed by anxiety rather than God, the faithful One.
So God is faithful in His purpose to remove things from us and to deal with things; it may be difficult for us, but God has to work it out in His sovereign way.
God has to gain us as His wife so that we would love and trust no one but God Himself.
If our house or our possessions become idols to us, we drink of them and not of God; in His faithfulness, God deals with the idols to bring us back to Himself so that we may drink of Him (Psa. 36:8).
How we thank the Lord for His faithfulness!
We may be oblivious concerning how much we forsake God and pursue after other things; we may think everything is alright, but God sees that our heart is occupied by so many other things than Him, so He has to deal with them in His faithfulness, so that we may drink of Him.
God is faithful in leading us in His economy (1 Cor. 1:9; 1 Thes. 5:23-24), and His economy is for us to drink Christ, to eat Christ, to enjoy Christ, to absorb Christ, and to assimilate Christ to become the increase of Christ.
When things happen to us, when sufferings and troubles come, we should not be dismayed or sorrowful; rather, by His grace and mercy, may we have a deeper understanding of God’s faithfulness, even feed on His faithfulness, for He is stripping us and removing things from us for us to drink of Him.
When we’re in the suffering or stripping, we may not realize this, but God deals with things and with us in His faithfulness so that we may come to Him for all we need, we would take Him as the source, and He would be the fountain of living waters to us!
Though we love the Lord and pursue Him, we are like naughty children saying that we eat Jesus, but actually we don’t; rather, we eat something else than Him, we eat things that poison us and kill us, not really satisfying us but rather damaging us.
But God Himself is our food and drink, He is our source and sustenance, the real food that nourishes us and the real drink that quenches our thirst, so He is working to bring us to Himself.
We are not better than the people of Israel; just as they were, so we are today, and anything can become an idol to us.
But praise the Lord, God is faithful in fulfilling His economy, and in His faithfulness God deals with with our idols so that we may drink of Him! Amen!
We all need to drink of God as the fountain of living waters, receiving Christ into us and assimilating Him so that He may increase for the fulfilment of God’s economy; in this way we become His expression to be His counterpart (John 3:29-30).
As we drink of Him, we are constituted with His element, for He dispenses Himself into us to make us the same as He is in life and nature, with the result that we will eventually match Him and marry Him as His counterpart, thereby fulfilling His purpose.
As we see God’s faithfulness, we realize that we have been unfaithful to God, we may repent and weep, and then we come to Him to drink of the living waters.
When the Lord has a way in this way in us to bring us back to Himself as the fountain of living waters, we give thanks to Him for everything, we praise God, and we enjoy Him (1 Thes. 5:16-18).
This is what God wants; He’s not interested in anything other than our enjoyment of Christ!
Thank You Lord, You are faithful in Your purpose to turn us from idols and bring us back to Yourself. Thank You for being faithful to expose and deal with anything that becomes an idol to us. Hallelujah, God is faithful in leading us into His economy for us to drink Christ, eat Christ, enjoy Christ, absorb Christ, and assimilate Christ so that God may have His increase with us to fulfil His economy. We trust in You, Lord, and we feed on Your faithfulness; although we are not faithful, we know that You are faithful. We trust that, in Your faithfulness, You deal with all our idols so that we may return to You, drink of You as the fountain of living waters, and make us Your increase for the fulfilment of Your economy! Oh Lord, we realize we have been unfaithful to You; we repent, we return to You, and we open to drink of You as the living waters!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Minoru Chen for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Jeremiah, msg. 4 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization Study of Jeremiah and Lamentations, week 3, The Two Evils of God’s People and God’s Faithfulness in Fulfilling His Economy.
- Further reading on this topic: see this article on, God’s Faithfulness in Leading us into His Economy.
- Hymns on this topic:
– “Great is Thy faithfulness!” “Great is Thy faithfulness!” / Morning by morning new mercies I see; / All I have needed Thy hand hath provided— / “Great is Thy faithfulness,” Lord, unto me! (Hymns #19)
– Draw and win and fill completely, / Till the cup o’erflow the brim; / What have we to do with idols / Who have companied with Him? (Hymns #437)
– My God, my Portion, and my Love, / My everlasting All, / I’ve none but Thee in heav’n above, / Or on this earthly ball… / How vain a toy is glittering wealth, / If once compared to Thee! / Or what’s my safety, or my health, / Or all my friends to me. (Hymns #600)
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