Jeremiah 35:19 Therefore this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: ‘Jehonadab son of Rekab will never fail to have a descendant to serve me.’”

The Bible records many object lessons of disobedience, but this is one of faithfulness. It shows the value of good traditions. There are many who discount traditions of all sorts, particularly those that seem limiting in any way, but tea-totalling isn’t a bad tradition! At a time when many bloodlines were about to be cut off by war and starvation, the promise that the Rechabites would always have descendants was actually a pretty big deal. We get nervous about how God sees all our sins, and rightly so, but we should also take comfort in how He also sees every act of faithfulness. This isn’t at all to say that we aren’t all in vital need of God’s grace and mercy, but it is to say that good deeds don’t go unrewarded. Society is so warped that there is an ironic saying that no good deed goes unpunished, but that’s not the case with God. Society does indeed sometimes punish faithfulness to God and His precepts, but God will reward such faithfulness, and that’s far greater and longer-lasting than anything society can do. Just recently I noted the denomination that has dis-accredited two seminaries for refusing to abandon Biblical principles on sex and marriage, but God is going to bless those schools, and particularly the people responsible for their principled stand. Society will always try to pull us away from God, but everything that keeps us close to Him, even tradition, comes with an eternal reward.

I am incredibly blessed to come from a family with a strong tradition of service to God, with a father, two grandfathers, and even a great-grandfather who were ministers and/or seminary professors. Some people would say I “didn’t have a chance,” but I am the only one of my siblings in full-time ministry. Some people have made much of my having been in Omura for 45 years, and at times I have faced the accusation of simply lacking the initiative to try anything else. However, as I have told numbers of people, I intend to be here until God Himself gives me different orders, and I personally expect that to be when He graduates me to heaven. I am to welcome new things, but never to the destruction of what He has done in me. Like Paul, “I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day.” (2 Timothy 1:12) I want to be fully faithful to my Lord, hearing and obeying Him in things big and small, so that He may be pleased with me. He certainly deserves no less.

Father, thank You for Your incredible faithfulness to me. Help me be faithful to you indeed, as an example to all who see me, drawing them to You for their salvation and Your glory. Thank You. Praise God!