There are a lot of trendy words out there in our language. Awesome.  Unreal.  But, well “faithfulness” isn’t one of them. It turns out though that we need faithfulness almost as much as the air we breathe.

Betrayal is one of those words that sends shivers down your spine. Have you ever been betrayed? Sure you have, so you know what it’s like.  But right in the midst of betrayal – well it turns out that God has an amazing opportunity for us

There are a few words in the English language that send shivers down your spine, none more so than the word “betrayal”. Those eight little letters, three syllables, just one word; speak about, well, someone that should have been with us turning against us.

Someone that we should have been able to trust being untrustworthy. Someone that should have been there for us, packing their bags and leaving us for dead.

Betrayal speaks of pain and loss. Ever been betrayed? Ever discovered that someone whom you trusted was saying things to other people behind your back?

It hurts, doesn’t it? And it’s the kind of hurt than can do some serious damage, deep inside where it really counts.

I’d like to share a story with you today about two men. One called Saul and the other one called David.

Saul was the first King of Israel and by all accounts, he was a bit of a disaster. He did things that he shouldn’t have and ultimately God said to him, “You are no longer going to be my king.”

And David was a young nobody, he was a shepherd. And God sent a man called Samuel, a prophet, to choose David from all his other brothers to be the next King of Israel.

After that happened, I think most of us will know the story of David and Goliath. You know, the two armies, the Philistine army and the Israeli army were having a standoff and they were looking at each other and David came along and slayed Goliath. And so he finished the standoff and he saved the whole situation.

And people saw that and his popularity grew so much that Saul became jealous because he knew that God had taken His hand off him and he just felt insecure. So Saul tried to kill David. And the people loved him, but David was on the run.

Well, it seemed that the whole thing got sorted out and ultimately David married Saul’s daughter, and yet again, David ended up on the run and Saul was trying to kill him.

Now, here’s David, he’s chosen and anointed and appointed by God as the next King of Israel, God’s hand and His blessing is really on David, people love him. Saul’s son Jonathan actually helps him to escape. And for years David is on the run. Sleeping in a cave, sleeping out … you know, he’s on the run.

And one day, when David has Saul cornered, Saul is asleep, here’s the opportunity. After all, Saul has betrayed him so many times. After all, David has been anointed and chosen as the next king. After all, he’s popular with the people. Saul was asleep in a cave and now, now is David’s chance.

But instead of slitting Saul’s throat, he cut off a corner of his robe and he went a distance and then called out to him. He said, “Saul, look at what I’ve done and I will not kill you because you are the King.”

Saul had betrayed and tried to murder David for no good reason, so many times and David, in the face of that betrayal, on the run for years, fearing for his life, David said, “I choose faithfulness, no matter what you do to me Saul, I will not betray you and I will be faithful to you because you are the King.”

Why? How does David come to a position like that? Actually, in a Psalm, a song that he wrote years later about his experiences, as a fugitive, this is what he wrote, this is what David discovered. He said:

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. Because You God, You are with me. Your rod and Your staff they comfort me. You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint me with oil, my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell with You in Your house forever. (Psalm 23:4-8)

Do you get it? In the wilderness of betrayal, of fear, David discovered something. He discovered when the people around us betray us, even to the point of death, no matter how black, no matter how lonely, no matter how scary, no matter how painful, God is faithful.

Out of that realisation, he reacted to Saul with mercy and faithfulness in return for Saul’s betrayal.

I look at David and I think that would have been a really tough gig. Here was David, he’d been chosen by the prophet Samuel, and Samuel was recognised as one of God’s key spokesmen, or prophets in the nation of Israel. He’d been chosen, he’d been anointed. That means that the prophet said, “I believe God is choosing you David to be the next king.”

Then the prophet Samuel poured oil over his head, which was symbolic of an anointing, which means God has appointed you as the next king.

So here’s this young David, he goes out and does the David and Goliath thing. He slays this giant. He goes out and fights battle after battle for his King Saul. He defeats the enemy time after time putting his life on the line.

People think, “Man, this David is cool! He is really a popular person.” And Saul is out to try and kill him time after time. Do you think that would have been a tough place? On the run, never knowing whether the next day would be the day that Saul’s soldiers would catch up with you and kill you. Do you reckon that was a tough gig? I do.

And yet, in the wilderness he discovers this God. And through what he learns in the wilderness and through his decision to be faithful in the face of betrayal; betrayal even to death, God made him the greatest king Israel has ever seen.

When you and I are living through this storm of betrayal, you know, when someone talks behind your back, when someone undermines you. When a husband or a wife deserts you, and you go through marriage breakup; or when parents desert their children. Life is full of betrayals, big ones and little ones.

When you and I are living through the storm of betrayal, walking alone and lost in the wilderness, in that dark valley. I believe that God wants us to hear this whisper: I am faithful. I am your God. I will be there with you in the valley of the shadow of death.

And when we feel God’s faithfulness in the wilderness like David did, somehow it changes us. Somehow we trade in angry and bitter and twisted, for softer and gentler and kinder. Somehow we trade in eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and become a sort of person with a deep faithfulness that blesses other people around us.

If you are anything like me, the word betrayal sends shivers down your spine. It’s a fearful place, it’s a lonely place; it’s a place of desertion, it’s a place of darkness. And into that, God whispers: I am faithful.

Every day, every morning, every evening His mercies are new. He is there, He knows. It may be lonely, it may be scary, but it is the place to discover God’s faithfulness and be forever changed.

On those days when life just turns to custard, when it all just comes apart – which, let’s face it, it does from time to time – finding faithful people, people who can really make a difference to where we hurt on the inside – well, it’s not easy.  And yet all the time – there’s someone ready and waiting in the wings.

You’re facing an emergency – but everyone you called is just too busy to talk to you.  The panic grows – the tears well up inside you.  Time’s running out.  Who are you going to call?

Technology is a wonderful thing, isn’t it? First, we had mobile phones and now we have call-line-identification or CLI as they call it so that you can see who is calling you. Unless of course, the person you are calling just doesn’t want to answer the phone. Every time you ring, they hang up.

But now, imagine you are in an emergency, I don’t know, your car has rolled over and your leg is pinned underneath. You are in excruciating pain and you are losing blood and you can feel yourself losing consciousness. Then you remember the mobile phone in your pocket. You reach for it and you call someone … but they hang up on you.

You call the next person, but they hang up on you too. The next one, the next one, they are either too busy to answer you or they hang up on you. You can’t get through to anyone. So what do you do? Who do you call?

Life does have its ups and downs, doesn’t it? Sometimes we are so busy with life we don’t even admit them to ourselves. Sometimes I find myself working so hard and such long hours. It’s not til my wife taps me on the shoulder or gives me a bit of a shake and says, “Do you realise how tired you are getting?”

If we go through everything in our life right now, I’m sure each one of us will find at least a handful of issues. Maybe it’s the relationship between a husband and wife that is a bit scratchy. Maybe you are just tired and you need a break. Maybe we are worried about one of our teenage kids. Maybe you are thinking about getting married, but … oh, I’m not sure if this is the right person or the right time or …

Maybe there is something that is causing you excruciating emotional pain. Maybe it’s just something niggling away. Maybe you’ve got it buried so deep that there is a tsunami about to hit. Maybe we are just not content but we don’t know why. Maybe we are suffering from depression. How could this happen to me? Maybe you are headed for divorce. Maybe someone at work is just being nasty.

Do you get it? There are all these apparently well-adjusted people walking around near us and they all seemed to be coping except for me. But the reality is … we all have issues in our lives from time to time.

Life is never perfect and people sometimes say to me, “Berni surely you don’t, I mean, you look as though you have it so well together.”

This program that we are sharing with you now, I was preparing for this program in Denver Airport just recently. It was noisy, I was tired and jet-lagged, I had a new set of multi-focals and I was struggling to see through the glasses.

Nobody’s life is perfect. We live in an imperfect world and I believe God wants us to enjoy life anyway. My hunch is, there at Denver Airport, probably God had me right where He wanted me to be, to do this program.

So you’ve got this issue? Who do you call? A friend? Maybe a counsellor? Maybe a husband or a wife? Maybe a pastor or a priest? Maybe a work colleague? Well, if you are really fortunate, I mean, if you are really blessed, you have someone to talk to. And, you are really, really fortunate if they can actually help you through.

But people don’t always have the answers. They can’t always help with what is going on inside. Other people have their weaknesses and their blind-spots. And mostly, they can’t always influence the circumstances that are causing the issue in our lives.

King David of Israel who lived 3000 years ago, well, that guy had more than his fair share of trouble in life. He had to fight lots of wars and sometimes he came so close to defeat and sometimes there were internal politics amongst his people. Sometimes he was facing impossible odds; sometimes he worked his way into blunders and mistakes. And in light of all of that, later on in his life, he wrote this; you can read it in Psalm 138. He said:

Thanks God, from the bottom of my heart. Thanks. I just want to sing Your praises because on the day I called You, You answered me. You increased the strength of my soul and when I walked through trouble You kept me from my enemies and You hand delivered me. You know God, I know that You will fulfil Your purposes for me and that Your steadfast love and faithfulness will endure forever in my life.

What a statement of experience. This is a man who has had more than his fair share of stresses and strains and fears. His life has been threatened more times than you and I have had hot breakfasts. And he looks back on all of that and he says, “Wow Lord, when I called You, You answered me.”

I wonder sometimes whether we are spending so much time finding help from other people and in other areas, we forget that God is a god who wants to make a difference in our lives. Real life, real problems, sometimes desperate problems, sometimes when our lives are threatened even, as David’s was.

There was a great movie a few years ago with Tom Hanks in it called Castaway, I’m not sure if you saw it. It’s quite a long movie. And it was about a man who worked for the courier company FedEx. And his plane went down and everyone was killed and he made it to a desert island. It was the story of how he made it through. And of all the parcels that came down with him, he kept one. And when he was ultimately rescued 4 or 5 years later he went and delivered it to the woman that it was addressed to.

Well, a few months after that movie, which was a great movie, FedEx brought out an ad and it was playing on the whole Castaway thing. The ad went something like this:

This FedEx truck pulls up in this beautiful, manicured, upper-middle-class neighbourhood and a man gets out of it, and obviously its playing on the Tom Hanks character cause his hair is really long and his beard is really … it looks like he’s been stranded on a desert island.

And he walks up to a house and he presses the button: ding, dong. And a woman answers the door and he says, “Madam, I’ve been stranded on a desert island for five years, and I’ve just been rescued, and I wanted to deliver this package to you because I work for FedEx.”

And the woman says, “Wow! That’s really amazing!” And she’s just about to close the door and he says, ‘Madam, just one thing. What’s inside the parcel?’ And so, she tears it open and she says, “Oh, nothing much, just junk really, a satellite phone, some seeds, a water filter and a fishing line.”

I love that ad! I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it before, but it … it just tickles my fancy!

I wonder sometimes, whether we aren’t a little bit like that Tom Hanks character. Stranded, yet all the time we have the answer right in front of us. Instead of running to the phone … we could run to God.

In the ten years that I have been walking in relationship with Jesus Christ as my Lord and my Saviour, there have been so many times when I felt weak, when I had a problem that I didn’t know what to do with. When circumstances have been against me, when I’ve felt inadequate or afraid.

And in those ten years, I can say exactly what it was that David said, “I called and He answered me.” God increased the strength of my soul. And even when I walked through trouble, His right hand delivered me. Like David, I know His steadfast love, love and faithfulness that endure forever

All I had to do was ask. Question: What are the issues and the problems and the disappointments and the fears in your life right now? Can you and I together say I called and He answered me?

So when you are facing that issue, when you are facing that problem, who will you call?

Sometimes you make a blunder or you do something – and as we look back on it, we think to ourselves, “If only I could’ve seen that one coming.  If only someone could’ve warned me. If only ….

Wouldn’t it be great if we could see into the future? I mean, see the consequences of our mistakes so we don’t make them. See around the corner so we don’t slip on that banana skin. Avoid accidents. Know how people will react. Know now that this job that we really, really want, well, it’s just not us and it’s going to bore our socks off in six months time.

What if we could know which way to jump when we are under pressure making a decision? What if we could go ahead, prepare a situation, then come back and walk into it knowing that the path has been cleared and smoothed. Or better still, what if we had a friend who could do that for us?

I don’t know if you remember that musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber called “Joseph and the Technicolour Dream-Coat”. But it’s actually a story that comes from the Old Testament in the Bible.

Joseph was the youngest of twelve brothers and well, he was Dad’s favourite. You know, he was the youngest and Dad made him this beautiful coat. He had dreams, big dreams for his life and he told his brothers. And they became really jealous because, well, Dad just lavished so much on Joseph, that ultimately they attacked him and they left him for dead, and they lied to their father and their mothers when they came home again.

Well, Joseph didn’t die. He was taken to Egypt. He was enslaved. He was unfairly imprisoned, he spent years in prison. But God’s hand was on Joseph. He found favour with Pharaoh because he was able to interpret a dream that Pharaoh had, and all the other soothsayers and witch doctors that Pharaoh had, simply could not interpret the dream. And Joseph said to Pharaoh:

Look Pharaoh, the dream is about this … the dream means that you are going to have seven years of abundance and plenty in the land, but after seven years, there is going to be a seven year famine. He said: If you don’t store up the food and the grain in the years of plenty, then the country is just not going to survive in the years of famine. (Genesis 41)

Pharaoh was so impressed he appointed Joseph as effectively the prime minister over all of Egypt. And during the years of plenty, Joseph was the one that made sure that the food and the grain was put aside so that during the years of famine that inevitably came, there was plenty to eat.

Now, that famine also hit the land where his father and his brothers were living. And his dad sent his brothers down to Egypt because everybody had heard that there was plenty of food down there.

When the brothers came down there the first time, they didn’t recognise Joseph because they had left him for dead. They thought that Joseph was dead. Joseph sent them away again, and when they came back, he told them who he was. They were shocked, they were scared. In this position of power he had life and death power over them. He could have had them killed.

And you know something? Maybe that would have been fair enough … fair revenge. But this is what Joseph said to them:

Don’t be afraid, don’t be distressed at what you did to me because God sent me ahead of you to ensure that there would be enough food to preserve you during this famine. (Genesis 45:7)

Get that? God sent Joseph ahead of his brothers because God had a plan. Those brothers and Joseph would be the fathers of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Descended from Abraham and Isaac, God’s chosen people. God had a plan.

And it doesn’t matter how rotten these brothers were, it doesn’t matter what bad things they did. God had a plan. Can you believe it?

After all that Joseph had been through, Joseph was able to say God sent me ahead to make sure that there was enough food so that God could fulfil His plan through you guys.

This week on A Different Perspective, we’ve been talking about God’s faithfulness. It is important for there to be faithfulness between people in relationships, that is really important. We all need faithful relationships with friends and loved-ones and husbands and wives and children.

But, I believe that the most exciting relationship of all is tapping into this God who sent Jesus, who is so faithful. One of the things that stopped me from doing that for a long, long time in my life was the sense that, well, I’m not good enough that God should love me; I’m not good enough that God should go ahead of me.

But what about these brothers of Joseph? I mean, they are bottom of the barrel scum for what they did to Joseph, don’t you think? And yet God did it for them. Wouldn’t He do it for you and me as well?

I believe that God has a purpose for my life, for your life, for everybody’s life. And the more I read about Him, the more I realise that this loving kindness, this faithfulness of His goes ahead of us. Paul the Apostle said:

Don’t you realise that God’s kindness is intended to bring you back to Him? (Romans 2:4)

What comes first? What we do or what God did? No, God’s kindness comes first. Again, Paul said:

While we were still God’s enemies, He sent His Son Jesus to die for us. (Romans 5:8)

When? Well, before you and I ever did anything. Let’s let that sink in. When Jesus was encouraging His disciples to pray, even before you open your mouths, he said, God already knows what you need.

It doesn’t matter who I am, who you are, what we’ve done, how low we’ve sunk … let it sink in, let God’s grace just sink in. God goes ahead of you and me in order to fulfil His purpose for our lives.

God’s faithfulness has already gone before you. Maybe you’ve been struggling with something, not willing, not really thinking that you could take it to God. Here is the good news: God has already gone before you, to put you and me in this place, here together today. I believe it is no coincidence.

I believe God wants each one of us to hear that His faithfulness has already gone before us through Jesus His Son, in opening a door to a relationship with God for anyone who believes in Jesus.

And if you haven’t done that yet, if you have never taken that step on the road back to God, all any of us has to do is say, “Lord, I’ve heard about this Jesus, and I believe, and I want a relationship.”

And from that point on, God will never leave us again. He has done it through Jesus and I know that He has done it in our lives in the special, practical things that we need help with.

I cannot begin to tell you the number of times that God has looked into the future for me. The times that He went ahead of me, opened doors, blessed me, helped me, opened other people’s hearts, changed their attitudes, smoothed the path, sometimes because I asked Him.

As I’ve grown in maturity in walking with Him and sensed His call on my life, I have become bold in asking God to go before me, because I believe He has a purpose, and I believe He will fulfil His purpose, and I believe when I ask, He does go before me.

But in the early days, when I didn’t know to ask. When I was still crawling, before I could walk, before I could run, He just did it anyway, without me asking. And you know something? He still does.

I’m not some super-spiritual … I’m a really practical, rational, down-to-earth sort of person.

God’s faithfulness and goodness are awesome. Every morning there is a new mercy. Every morning there is a new blessing. Every day He goes ahead of you and me. So, what are you waiting for?