Thirty Minute Flatbread Meal 😋 The Test of Faith

2 Timothy 2:11-13 

¹¹ This is a faithful saying: For if we died with Him, we shall also live with Him. ¹² If we endure, we shall also reign with Him. If we deny Him, He also will deny us. ¹³ If we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself.

With God, there is a direct link between the difficulties we have as believers and the joy and glory that wait ahead for us. "If we endure, we will also reign with Him." - It is wrong to understand these verses as though it’s saying that by our sufferings and our hardships that we win a reward.

That is never the case in the Scriptures. We do not merit anything from God ever. No amount of faithful service puts God in our debt and obligates Him to give us a reward.
What these verses are telling us, is that this is a test of the reality of our faith.

If we really are Christ's… if He has genuinely come to dwell within us… that fact will always manifest itself by our willingness to suffer with Him.
We become willing, to give up some things… to purposefully set ourselves against the allurements and temptations of the world and live a different lifestyle.
That is the manifestation of a true Christian life.

If we have the genuine desire to live for Christ, then we can be certain that we shall reign with Him because we belong to Him.

But if we are not willing… if the moment our Christianity begins to pinch a little bit. If we are asked to give up something that we enjoy doing and live in a way that is not Biblical. If we cringe at being laughed at or made fun of and would rather blend in and go along with the worlds ways.

We need to wonder if that isn’t telling us that our Christianity is a fraud.

Like the last part of verse 12 tells us: “If we deny Him, He also will deny us.”
Jesus knows what is real and what is not real about us.

Anyone who will give up Christianity when pressure comes or if their life isn’t going as they hoped or planned or if doubt and confusion becomes overwhelming and everything you thought you believed seems to be crashing in around you.
If when the moments of pressure come, [and it will] we willingly give Christianity up.

Then He who has always known the truth about us will say to us as we’re told in Matthew 7:23, “And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’”

And remember what 1 John 2:19 says, “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.”

But then we read in verse 13, “If we are faithless, He remains faithful…”

This is a verse dear to my heart.
Because the Lord recognizes that even when we do have His life in us… and we are willing to suffer… there will be times when we give in.

Often, we are weak, and we fail and fumble.
Much like Peter when he denied his Lord yet "He will remain faithful, for He cannot deny himself."

If He is in us, He will hold us safe until the end. He will restore us; He will bring us back. He will labor through and in wonderful ways to turn us away from that which has temporarily derailed us.
He will bring us back at last to humility, to repentance, and confession, and bring us to restoration, so that we continue our walk with Him by grace.

I am so thankful for the promise that “whosoever believes in Jesus shall have everlasting life”  even if or when we are unfaithful at times…
I read that we can translate the opening word of today’s verse,  ‘if’ with the word ‘although’  because ‘it’ is also the Greek word for ‘although’.

Think about that…
Although we are faithless, He will remain faithful, for He cannot deny himself.