God is faithful...

I mean that on multiple levels this morning. Not only is it just a generically true statement, it is also something I am learning a lot about these days. First of all, God constantly reveals His faithfulness in my life. Constantly. I have an amazing soon-to-be husband whom I love and who loves me. (The interesting paradox about that is that I love him more than I could ever imagine, yet I love him more and more each day.) God has given us an incredible home, the provisions for which still blow me away. I have a fabulous community of believers around me, and a wonderful church. I am blessed with a decent-paying job, as well as prospects of a "career" in the near future. My family and soon-to-be family are amazingly supportive. Overall, my life is just cram-packed full of blessings because of God's faithfulness to me. What's even more interesting, or valuable to learn I guess, is that God's faithfulness is NOT dependent upon my faithfulness. I am horribly unfaithful to God in certain areas of my life, yet His faithfulness never changes. There never comes a point when God says, "Well Meg, you've let me down too many times, so I'm not going to be active in your life for a while." It's a good thing, too, because I fear I would find myself in that place far too often if that's how it worked. Holly spoke last night at Fusion on the importance of being in the Word, which was seriously convicting for me because that is the area where I have been struggling the most with faithfulness lately. A point she brought up (as did Rob during worship) was that rather than abusing the grace that God shows us, His grace compells us to serve Him more and draw closer to Him. That's how I feel. I realize that God's faithfulness does not change despite my lack thereof; yet rather than being like "well okay, I guess it really doesn't matter what I do," I am instead compelled to be more faithful because of His unchanging faithfulness. So I determined last night before I went to bed that I was getting up this morning without hitting the snooze so that I could have time for my quiet time. This morning I read in Nehemiah 9, which was amazingly appropriate. The whole chapter is the nation (people) of Israel collectively confessing their sin before God. The whole chapter, if summarized, goes something like this: "God, we sinned against You, yet You did not forsake us. We sinned against You again, and You did not forsake us. We sinned against You, and You, because of Your grace, did not forsake us. We sinned against You, and because You are a God of mercy and love and grace, and You are slow to anger, You did not forsake us. We sinned against You again, and You did not forsake us." The whole thing just reminded me of myself. Every day I let God down. I fail to keep the commitments I make to Him. I fall short. Yet, because of His grace and mercy and love and kindness, and because He is slow to anger, and because His faithfulness never changes, He does not forsake me. And that makes me want to serve Him more.