Previously, when I worked in management, I used to train new supervisors. I was careful to point out that as they matured as a leader, what they valued most in their employees would change. I told them that the employees they would come to respect the most would be the reliable ones. Supervising people that have a similar upbringing, that share your sense of humor or even that love your leadership style is nice, but none of those compare to having an employee that does what she says she is going to do.
To illustrate the point I would frequently use an analogy to describe two different groups of employees—those you can delete, and those you can’t. I would say, “You are going to assign tasks to people by email. Both kinds of people will respond respectfully and agree to do them. Over time you will realize that when one kind of person responds, you are so confident that she will resolve the issue that you delete her response and forget about it. The other kind of person responds with the same intent, but you do not delete his email. You know you will need to keep it as a reminder to follow up.”
There are few qualities that instill more confidence in a relationship than reliability. There is great comfort in knowing the other is dependable, that he is trustworthy. If true in human relationships, how much more should reliability instill confidence in your relationship with God? Even the most well-intentioned and faithful person in the world fails to follow through on some promises, even if it is because he is incapable of keeping them. But that never happens with God. He is both reliable and capable.
As to His reliability, Numbers 23:19 reads, “God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?” God is the ultimate “Man of His word.” Jesus uses the strongest possible language in Matthew 5:18, “For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. This was not only a message from Jesus to the apostles. He is looking you in the eye, today, and telling you that you can take the Word of God to the bank. It WILL be accomplished.
Regarding His capability, Romans 4:21–22 reads, “[Abraham was] fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was ‘counted to him as righteousness.’” Abraham got credit just for believing that what God said He would do, He would do. When Sarah laughed at the prospect of becoming pregnant at 90 years old she was reprimanded with the question, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” The book of Job is a 42-chapter description of the power of God. No one questions the capability of God at the end of that!
These reliability principles underpin the Christian faith and are elementary to the believer. The overarching theme of the entire Bible is a promise made and a promise kept. The Old Testament is a series of promises that God subsequently fulfills in the New Testament. To be a Christian is to believe God when He says that He will do it and that He can do it.
While your salvation is based on that belief, the question is—does your daily life reflect that belief? It’s easy, even satisfying, to hear story after story about the promises and power of God from the comfort of a Sunday morning pew, but what impact does it have on a Tuesday afternoon when nothing seems to be going right? Are the sermons on David and Goliath or Daniel and the Lion’s Den good for warming your heart on Sunday but lack any connection to your Tuesday struggles? Why is there a disconnect?
If you love God than you already know He is reliable. The question is, are you? When God assigns a hardship to you, are you the kind of dependable child that recognizes it was given to you for God’s glory? Can you be trusted to handle a difficulty or will God have to constantly follow up? Praise God that He is always near us and does not “delete” anything, but there is a difference between the reliable child and the well-intentioned child.
Look at your life through the grid of God’s promises and power. He is working all things according to the counsel of His will, and for those who love God all things work together for good. The reliable child trusts her reliable God and recognizes that the hardship she is experiencing, from God’s perspective, is a good thing. When you acknowledge that, it shifts your attention from questioning and enduring to rejoicing and overcoming. Choose to be a dependable child of God that can be trusted with hardships and not merely a well-intentioned child that says the right things yet requires constant reminders. Ask God to help you develop into a reliable child of God.