Good morning people who live by clear and unchangeable biblical convictions.

Galatians 5:25 NIV But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

We know that God is faithful, but in this verse, the word faithfulness is the word faith in the KJV. This is the same word we find in the great faith chapter of Hebrews 11, and faith means a conviction of the truth. There are a few things that I see as I lean into this.

Our God is the Truth and He is not soft or weak on what He believes. This is an interesting thought.

We talk a lot about our convictions as followers of Jesus – and this is important (we’ll look more at this soon). But it would be good for us to stop and consider that God has convictions; He has strongly held beliefs. In fact, God is completely unshakeable about what He believes.

God’s convictions are not just preferences or opinions. A preference is a greater liking of one alternative over another. An opinion is a view or judgement formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge. Oh, let’s go there today!

Many have reduced God down to something that He is not. God does not have preferences or opinions, and nor does He value or validate people’s preferences or opinions! God did not create and set things into order and design only to say, “Here’s a good option, but feel free to have your own opinion on things and follow your own preferences.”

God is not that mean! I say this because, left to our own choices outside of living under divine command, people make stupid decisions. Even when there are clear instructions from God – which is the very essence of truth based on conviction – people choose to make different decisions and the result is always death in some form. Just remember Adam and Eve.

We’ll keep on going on this tomorrow, but for today, I encourage you to meditate on this question:

What convictions (faith) does God have?