8.1 Key themes⤒🔗

• Faithfulness is to be full of faith.
• Faith is a gift that God gives us through his Holy Spirit.
• To have faith in God means to trust in God’s promises.
• God is worthy of all our faith, because he keeps all his promises.
• A person who is growing in faithfulness will:
  - obey God and
  - pray.
• The more you pray and obey God, the stronger your faith will become.

8.2 Galatians 5:22-23←⤒🔗

^5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

^5:23 gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

© NET Bible

8.3 Genesis 12←⤒🔗

^12:1 Now the Lord said to Abram, 'Go out from your country, your relatives, and your father’s household to the land that I will show you.

^12:2 Then I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will make your name great, so that you will exemplify divine blessing.

^12:3 I will bless those who bless you, but the one who treats you lightly I must curse, and all the families of the earth will bless one another by your name.'

^12:4 So Abram left, just as the Lord had told him to do, and Lot went with him. (Now Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran.)

^12:5 And Abram took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, and all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Haran, and they left for the land of Canaan. They entered the land of Canaan.

^12:6 Abram traveled through the land as far as the oak tree of Moreh at Shechem. (At that time the Canaanites were in the land.)

^12:7 The Lord appeared to Abram and said, 'To your descendants I will give this land.' So Abram built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.

^12:8 Then he moved from there to the hill country east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the Lord and worshiped the Lord.

^12:9 Abram continually journeyed by stages down to the Negev.

^12:10 There was a famine in the land, so Abram went down to Egypt to stay for a while because the famine was severe.

^12:11 As he approached Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, 'Look, I know that you are a beautiful woman.

^12:12 When the Egyptians see you they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me but will keep you alive.

^12:13 So tell them you are my sister so that it may go well for me because of you and my life will be spared on account of you.'

^12:14 When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful.

^12:15 When Pharaoh’s officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh. So Abram’s wife was taken into the household of Pharaoh,

^12:16 and he did treat Abram well on account of her. Abram received sheep and cattle, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels.

^12:17 But the Lord struck Pharaoh and his household with severe diseases because of Sarai, Abram’s wife.

^12:18 So Pharaoh summoned Abram and said, What is this you have done to me? Why didn’t you tell me that she was your wife?

^12:19 Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her to be my wife? Here is your wife! Take her and go!

^12:20 Pharaoh gave his men orders about Abram, and so they expelled him, along with his wife and all his possessions.

© NET Bible

8.4 Faithfulness = full of faith←⤒🔗

This lesson is about the seventh part of the fruit of the Spirit: faithfulness. To understand what faithfulness is, look carefully at the word: faith-ful-ness. Faithfulness means to be full of faith!

Faith is the same as trust. When you have faith in God, you trust that all his promises are true. God promised to Abraham that he would give him a new land, make him a big nation, and bless him. Abraham trusted that God’s promises are true. God promises us that he will give us eternal life through Jesus Christ. Do you trust that this promise is true? Then you have true faith.

Nobody can have faith by himself. Faith is a gift from God. It is part of the fruit of the Spirit. In Ephesians 2:8 Paul says, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.”

8.5 God’s faithfulness←⤒🔗

The Bible tells us over and over again that God is faithful. For example, Psalm 100 ends with these words: “For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.” When we say that God is faithful, we do not mean that God is full of faith. We mean that we can be full of faith in God. God is worthy of our faith, because he keeps all his promises. He will never let us down.

Even our closest friends and family can let us down. Even Christians can break their promises to us. Think of the disciples of Jesus Christ, who left him at the last moment. We should not put our trust in people, or even in ourselves. We should put all our trust in God. He is worthy of all our trust.

God is faithful even when we are unfaithful. Abraham struggled to trust God all the way. When he came to Egypt, he became afraid. He thought that the Egyptians would kill him to get his wife Sarah. He told Sarah to say that she was only his sister. In this way, Abraham almost lost Sarah. He did not trust that God would protect them.

But God was still faithful to his promises. He made sure that Abraham got back his wife. He also protected their lives

3. God will never let us down.

1. 1. God will never let us down.

2. God will never let problems come our way.

3. God is full of faith.

8.6 Growing in faithfulness←⤒🔗

Just like Abraham, we are not always full of faith. Sometimes we become afraid and we forget that we can trust in God. But the Holy Spirit helps us to grow in faith. Later in his life, Abraham’s faith was so great that he was even willing to sacrifice his son (Genesis 22)!

Any fruit is small at the beginning, and then it grows to become big. It is the same with the fruit of the Spirit in a Christian. At first it will be small. But the Holy Spirit is faithful. He will make it grow.

How do you know if you are growing in faithfulness? James 2:26 says, “Faith without deeds is dead.” Faith makes us obedient to God. Because Abraham trusted God’s promise to give him land, he left his own country. He moved to the strange new land that God showed him. In this new land he prayed to God (verse 7). In his life, the more he obeyed God, the stronger his faith became.

Think of a bridge that goes over a dangerous river. If you don’t trust the bridge, you will not walk on it. But if you trust the bridge, you will walk. In the same way, if you trust God, you will “walk” on his promises. You will obey God’s Word, no matter what. You will also pray more and more. The more you pray and obey God, the stronger your faith will become. You will be a faithful person: full of faith, until the end.