Would you want a kid on your little league team who might make it to 75% of the practices and will only miss a few of the games? Would you want the 911 dispatcher to say, “well, let’s see if we have anyone available to help you…”? Do you still want that contractor to finish fixing your bathroom, the one that started the job three and a half weeks ago and has not been back for eight days now even though the project is not even half done? Would you want to take a flight across the ocean with an airliner that has a 96% crash-free flying record? Would you eat at the street vendor’s booth, the one that only has an incident with food poisoning once or twice a year? Would you pay for cell phone or internet service that fails to work one day every week, but you never know which day? Why not? You would not want any of these people, goods, or services because none of them are faithful.
Now consider yourself before God. How faithful are you? Do you read your Bible and pray every day, or did you start reading the Gospel of John three and a half weeks ago and have been too busy to open your Bible back up for the past eight days? Can others in church depend on you, or do you only make it to 75% of the church services and most of the special programs? Do you lead your family to do what is right before God through every stage of development, or do you quit when they go to grade school, become teens, or move out of the house? Do you keep finding ways to grow in your faith, like Bible studies, prayer meetings, and Sunday School, or are you content with your ignorance? Do you bless God with godly music and recreation all week long, or do you fill your head and soul with worldly entertainment as soon as you get out of the church doors? Do you find yourself enjoying fellowship with God anywhere and everywhere, or is your relationship with God something you only enjoy once in a while?
Faithfulness to God cannot be measured in the few hours that we go to church every week, although that might be a good indication. Faithfulness to God is the life that we live, 24 hours a day and 7 days a week and 52 weeks a year, for Him and with Him. On a scale from 1 to 10, how faithful are you? Before you answer, think about this: anything less than 10 is not being faithful.
“And the apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith.’ So the Lord said, ‘If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you. And which of you, having a servant plowing or tending sheep, will say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and sit down to eat?’ But will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare something for my supper, and gird yourself and serve me till I have eaten and drunk, and afterward you will eat and drink’? Does he thank that servant because he did that things that were commanded him? I think not. So likewise you, when you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do.’”
Luke 17:5-10