Look around your life and start counting how many relationships fall apart because a lack of love and a lack of faithfulness. Now look at yourself and count how many times it was because of your lack of love and your unfaithfulness…
Never let go of love and faithfulness. Tie them round your neck; write them on your heart. If you do this, both God and people will be pleased with you. – Proverbs 3:3-4 (my own translation)
It’s a pretty straightforward proverb. The only difficulty with this proverb is actually executing it. I mean, just look at what the writer of the proverb is asking of us. The writer is asking us to shut out all hatred and selfishness AND closing down all deliberate hypocrisy and lying by being merciful and loving. In fact, the writer of this proverb says to tie them to your neck and tattoo that right into your heart. The sense here is that with these two actions, our lives would become so consequentially tied and united. That is to say that you would die without practicing loving and faithfulness. The weight of this advice is definitely life altering. You see, practicing these two things things: love and faithfulness, will bring you favor with God in that He will be pleased with you. However, what trips us up is not the idea that God will favor us, it is the statement that other people will favor us for it. In the 21st century, we have seen way too often that our love and faithfulness is often repaid by deceit and backstabbing. Just watch the show “Scandal” or “Revenge” if you don’t believe me. Rather, just look at your workplace and see how much love and faithfulness isn’t offered or even rewarded in our cubicled lives. Living in this world teaches us that loving and being faithful to anything other than our own-selves is foolishness, not a wisdom that will undoubtedly affect your life in an overwhelmingly positive manner. So the question is, how do we navigate this dilemma? The Bible says in Proverbs 3:5-6:
Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. – Proverbs 3:5-6
If that wasn’t clear enough for you, let me paraphrase: it doesn’t matter what you see and what you experienced about how loving and being faithful may lead to disastrous consequences. What matters is that you trust God, because of who you know God to be, will look upon your godliness (loving and faithful actions) and be pleased with you. The hope we have for loving and being faithful hinges on the fact that God is loving and faithful and as a result, people will be pleased with us for pleasing God. If they aren’t and if they don’t, it doesn’t matter because we will continue to acknowledge the fact that God is the reason we live and God will work our lives out for His purposes. Love and faithfulness pays off, give it a try today.