The Outward Bend of Faithfulness

God turns our personal faith into loving and serving others

Written by Lara d’Entremont

My bedside lamp cast light on the pages of my open Bible. My eyelids slumped. It was 5:45 a.m. A cozy silence snuggled around me. Every mom knows how rare these moments are—and how long they typically last.

A shrill whine echoed down the hallway. I squeezed my eyes shut, willing it to stop, but it continued. I sighed, set the Bible aside, and crept down the hallway. My sleepy boy rubbed his eyes with pudgy fists but refused to settle back into his own bed. I drew him into the crook of my arm and nestled him into the sheets beside me, where he patted the thin leaves of my Bible and flipped its pages. So much for devotions today. 

As Christians, we all know the mundane, daily plodding of faithfulness. Finding time to pray and read our Bibles—perhaps before the sun kisses the horizon. The work of discipling our children. The everyday choice of obedience, of thankfulness rather than complaint. The walk (or perhaps a light jog if you’re running late) to the pew each Sunday. These are some of the ordinary acts of faithfulness.

Such acts can seem so personal that over time our eyes slowly turn inward, and to have someone else step in with us while we do them seems intrusive. 

We know the temptation to make everything about ourselves. Much of life today comes with the option to personalize it to our liking—choose the font for your phone, get your name embroidered or engraved on your latest purchase, or order a book with your name as the main character. 

As I studied Scripture that morning, my routine was entirely personalized for myself. I had brewed a cup of lemon and ginger tea with a touch of honey. I read from a Bible I’d bought with the right size margins and perfect shade of brown leather. I was curled up in my bed with pillows stacked up just right behind me. 

During many of these morning Scripture studies, I set out to not just know God but to prove my worth and abilities. For years I read Scripture daily to earn my place as God’s adopted child. Each morning, I opened my Bible, took out my notebook, and studied like I used to during exam week. 

When we harness faithfulness like this, we plow through the rocky soil of our hearts in our own strength. As Michael Horton writes in his book Ordinary, “Rather than placing our trust in God, we learn to trust in our own piety and devotion. Our tireless service is driven more by a desire for self-justification and self-acclaim than by being secure in Christ enough to tend now to the actual needs of others.”

Faithfulness is not accomplished by our own strength and muscle. Pastor Nick Batzig writes in an article for Ligonier Ministries, “We do not come to Christ by faith for justification and then depart from Him for sanctification. In Christ our sins are pardoned, and in Him the reign of sin is overthrown. The same Christ who justified us also sanctifies us; therefore, the same faith that justifies us also sanctifies us (John 15:1–5).”

We were saved by the grace of God and called to do good works, but he didn’t save us and leave us to sort it out by ourselves. He calls us to work out our salvation “with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12–13 ESV). 

Our faithfulness is through Christ. By being united to him in salvation, the grasp sin once had on us is broken. “Christ came not only to cancel sin’s debt; he came also to break its power,” Batzig writes. To live faithfully, we need to rely on Christ. We won’t make any progress in faithfulness only by our own sweat, but by first resting in our union with Christ.

And growing in faithfulness isn’t just for our good. The Reformer Martin Luther declared in The Freedom of a Christian: 

If you want to offer a donation, pray, or fast, do not do it thinking that you want to have some benefit for yourself, but give it freely so that other people may enjoy what you give. When you do it for their good, then you are a true Christian . . . From Christ these blessings flow to us, for he has taken all that belongs to us into his life, as if he were the very person who we are. From us they should flow to those who need them.

God doesn’t need our good works, and we do not need any reward from our good works because our Father has already given us everything in Christ. But our neighbours do need our care and support. While faithfulness may seem like a solitary work—the daily disciplines of waking up early to read our Bibles and pray, repenting of sin, finding ways we can love and serve others—these are practices we’re called to do in community for community. 

As Hebrews 10:24–25 says, “Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.”

It’s easy to draw inward as we seek to be faithful, even to the point of neglecting fellowship. But we need one another to encourage, guide, correct, and at times even carry us. Let’s go deeper than accountability that only floats on the surface tension, simply asking each other if we’ve been faithful in our spiritual disciplines. Let’s get to the heart and redirect one another’s gazes to our hope in Christ’s return.

That morning when my son cuddled in my bed next to me while I tried to read the Bible felt like an interruption and hindrance to a good work. Yet Christ tells me that two good works were happening at once. First, I showed the love of the Father to my child who called out, demonstrating that our Father hears us whenever we call to him. And second, I also brought the Word before him, showing him the importance of feeding ourselves from it each day, no matter what may come. 

The work of faithfulness is far from solitary. Together, let’s press on—by the power we have in Christ, for the good of our neighbours. 

Lara d’Entremont is a single mother and the author of A Mother Held: Essays on Anxiety and Motherhood.