What does it mean to be faithful?
Faithful means to be thorough in fulfilling the duties you're given. You're thorough, and you're detailed, and you follow them through.
It means that if you give your word, you keep it. That makes you a faithful person. When you make a promise, if you're reliable, you'll keep your word. That's a big one.
Faithful means to maintain constant allegiance and affection for someone. In a marriage, you want to maintain - you maintain your heart affection to your spouse, and there's no other people that come in, and the loyalty divided.
Faithfulness also means that you commit to a standard and you stay there. So faithfulness will always hinge on what is important to you and your commitment to it.
For us, our destiny in the coming kingdom is important to us. Our destiny in the eternal kingdom is important to us. Being faithful to Christ is important to us, and so we've remained committed to that over the course of our life.
How can we develop faithfulness?
Let's look at a few practical things…. The first thing is to understand God is not looking for perfect people. There's no perfect people, no people that have it all together. They may look like it. He's just searching for people who will commit to Him, and then be faithful with what they do have. Faithfulness means being loyal, and steady, and dependable, and it's the fruit of having a heart that believes and trusts God.
If you believe truly in your heart that He's a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him, you will diligently seek Him. So, faithfulness flows out of what we believe about the character of God, and the goodness of God; we're no longer looking at what people are doing, or what people are saying. Our focus is Jesus Himself. It doesn't mean we'll be perfect. It doesn't mean we won’t struggle. It doesn't mean we won't make mistakes or decisions... It simply means this: that you're just going to continue to trust God, and follow Him, and do what He tells you. That's not so hard is it?
Here's the big thing... You are unlimited in the amount of faithfulness you can have. We might be limited in money; or in our case, in the time left; limited in the resources or giftings you have; maybe limited in your education… But none of those things have any bearing to do with faithfulness.
Faithfulness is a quality of your heart and character, and there's no limit on the degree you can be faithful with what's entrusted to you. Faithfulness is cultivated in a whole number of different ways. Let me just list a few areas, so when you're thinking of faithfulness, it's not some church-based thing. You're looking at how you do life, and how you handle what is entrusted to you. Faithfulness can be cultivated in all kinds of areas…
1) Your personal devotional life. Maintaining the first affection towards Christ; maintaining your prayer life in secret. Keeping your secret life with God constant, your priesthood to Him, you are faithful to that.
2) You obey Him in little matters. When Jesus gives you just a little instruction (don't do this, or do this), you just follow His instructions, even if you don't always see what the outcome is.
Basically, you're choosing: my life is about pleasing God, not about keeping people happy, or pleasing people. If I seek to please people, I will not be faithful to God, because my desire for their approval, or to please them, will put me in conflict with what God wants me to do.
That's very important when it comes to marriage and family, and often people make the mistake of putting family or their spouse first, instead of actually being yielded and obedient to the Lord first, which will direct you on a fruitful path.
So small tasks, many people have the attitude if it's small, then it's no value. It's insignificant. But if you treat every little task as: it's my act of worship, it's my act of serving God, then you can just, whenever you do the task, you do it well. You do it excellent. You do it on time. You do it with care, and you develop the character of a faithful servant… and of course, you get promoted. Even naturally, that happens.