Faithfulness: Showing Our Kids God’s Commitment to Us
Four well-loved rocking chairs, creaky from many years of use, grace my front porch that faces the Colorado Rocky Mountains. Many a summer morning will find me with a cup of tea in hand, reading my Bible and swaying in this beloved setting. All of the years of growing up in our home, my children would awaken and find me seeking the Lord before my day started.
One such morning, a pajama-clad adult daughter joined me. Home for just a couple of weeks from England where she lived meant I cherished every moment we had together. As we sat breathing in the beauty of aspens shimmering nearby and peace that surrounded us, I could tell something was bubbling up in her heart:
“Mama, I’ve been thinking so much about the importance of committing to being faithful in life—faithful through ideals, faithful when you feel like quitting, faithful to vows, faithful when friendships hit rocky ground. One of the best gifts you gave us, that I didn’t understand until now, was choosing over and over again to be faithful, to keep going, to be stable in an unstable world.
So many of my friends and colleagues are adrift in the world, with scars from their childhood from many compromises they experienced in their growing-up years. But now, I understand better that it was one of the best legacies you gave to us. You spared us scars just by choosing day after day, year after year, to be faithful. I think it is one of the reasons I can believe that God will be faithful to me, because we saw it exhibited all the days of growing up with you and Daddy making hard choices amidst the ups and downs of life—to keep going, to keep seeking God, to keep loving in all seasons. Thank you, Mama, for all the sacrifices you made. I think this is one of the greatest and rare gifts of our whole lives.”
I was so surprised but so deeply grateful. Faithfulness matters—it is the hard work of the soul. In a world that is filled with stories of compromise, the choice to be faithful in all the moments of our lives, our decisions to cultivate faithfulness, build a lifelong picture for our children to understand what God is like in his commitment to us.
There are many facets of what faithfulness means. Steadfast, trustworthy, and devoted to relationships, to commitments, to ideals, and in character gets to the heart of what it means to be faithful. When Paul tells us that faithfulness is a fruit of the Spirit, he is revealing one of the most profound truths about God. God is unchanging in his devoted love to us. We can depend on him to be good, always. We can know that he looks upon us with grace, every day, all the time. Why? Because he is faithful and his faithfulness endures forever.
Psalm 33:4 says, “For the Word of the Lord is upright, and all his work is done in faithfulness.” This verse has given me direction so many times in my life. All his work is done in faithfulness. I would ask myself, what is all of my work in which he wants me to be faithful?
Faithful to my marriage, even when our relationship is strained by life.
Faithful to train my children, even when I feel like I am failing.
Faithful to trust God, even when life is hard.
Faithful as a friend, even when conflict arises.
Faithful to keep my ideals, even when I am weary.
Faithful to keep building my home into a lifegiving place amidst messes, meals, dishes, and housework.
Faithful to read my Bible and to choose to live with grace when the world seems to be falling apart.
Faithfulness is the glue that keeps us going forward, one step, one day at a time through all the difficult and dark passages of life and in all the choices we must make each day. Faithfulness will flow through us when we listen to God’s Spirit encouraging us moment by moment to keep going, to keep believing that our labor is not in vain.
Voices in our culture give us permission to quit when we are weary and to compromise our ideals. But God’s Spirit gives us the encouragement to keep going, to keep trusting, to have faith—believing forward into the blessings of God when we cannot feel or see it now.
One of my life verses became a picture to me of what it means to be faithful: “Trust in the Lord and do good, dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness” (Psalm 37:3, NASB). When we cultivate the seeds or flowers we plant in a garden, we cultivate and develop the potential of those seeds by watering them over and over again, by shielding them in storms, by fertilizing them so they might grow strong and fruitful. Similarly, when we cultivate the fruit of faithfulness, we develop it over time. We make it a goal to grow it more fruitfully over seasons.
Our children will enter adulthood with constant alluring voices that will tempt them to compromise their faith and ideals. Yet, when we choose to be faithful in our lives, we are giving them a living picture of what it means to be steadfast and immovable—that it is a way of living, a choice we make, a practice we live out over and over again. Our faithfulness will give them a pattern to follow.
As I look back over my life, the choice to practice faithfulness shaped the strong relationship I now have with my children, and it has given me an open door in speaking into their lives. God will grant you the grace to be able to choose faithfulness because he cares deeply about your story, your struggles, your whole life. May you know his love as you learn to practice faithfulness every day.
R|M Apply Questions
What are the most challenging places in your life where you are tempted to compromise your ideals (personal convictions about what it practically looks like to follow God) and be unfaithful?
What do you think it means to be faithful in your role as a mother to your children?
What are 3 specific areas in your life where you believe you need to cultivate and choose to work on faithfulness?
How does God’s faithfulness to us enable us to be faithful in motherhood?
