Daily Manna · Day 244 · September 1
The Lord is Faithful
“But the Lord is faithful, who shall stablish you, and keep you from evil.”
When someone has just let you down, a friend may tell you, "The Lord is faithful." It is a true sentence, yet in that moment it can sound like changing the subject.
Look at where Paul puts it. One verse earlier he has written, "all men have not faith." He is not pretending people are reliable; from his own experience he says many are not. Right beside that plain admission he sets this: "But the Lord is faithful, who shall stablish you, and keep you from evil." He gives God's faithfulness two jobs. First, it will "stablish" you, an old word for setting something on a firm base so it can carry weight. Second, it will "keep you from evil." In Paul's Greek, those words can just as naturally mean "the evil one." So Paul is promising protection from the enemy who would like to finish what your disappointment started.
The Thessalonians were being pressed from outside by people who opposed them. They were also being worn down from inside, by members who had stopped working and become busybodies. Your trouble may be smaller than theirs, yet it has a face and a name, and it hurts more than it would look on paper. The two situations do not match, and there is no need to pretend they do. What carries across from their trouble to yours is the sentence Paul reached for when people had failed him.
A person can fail you, and God is still faithful. Those are two separate facts, and the first one has done no damage to the second.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 244 is They Soon Forgat (Psalm 106:13).