An autistic person’s guide to the fruit of the Spirit

Part 7: Faithfulness

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.

Forever God is faithful, Forever God is strong,
Forever God is with us, Forever.

Give thanks to the Lord (Forever) — Jesse Reeves and Chris Tomlin

Who is like you, LORD God Almighty? You, LORD, are mighty, and your faithfulness surrounds you. Psalm 89:8

Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. Hebrews 10:23

Faithfulness is a quality of God, it is a theme that goes through the Bible. God has done what he said he would do and will do what he has said he will do. It ties in with hope in the lives of believers, we have no need to be afraid because God is consistent and trustworthy. This hope is not a hope in the future. Hope is fro here and now.

This is how it works. God’s faithfulness gives us hope. As we live in the Holy Spirit we become more and more like God in his faithfulness and our faithfulness gives them hope. Hope here and now. Faithfulness does not come naturally, we need to live by the Holy Spirit to fulfil our becoming hope for the world in our generation.

Compared with God’s trustworthiness we fall far behind. But there is good news. The Holy Spirit as the full nature of God, just like the Father and the Son, and indwells those who love God. The Holy Spirit makes these fruit of the Spirit grow in the lives of those she indwells, we become more trustworthy, more consistent, more faithful as we let the Holy Spirit have her way in us.

The downside of human faithfulness is twofold; when we say we will do something sometimes we fail or forget, and sometimes we are dishonest, we never intended doing it in the first place. I have to admit that I am very prone to failure and forgetting. Autistic people like me tend to be more honest than some, we see things more in terms of black and white than non-autistic people, generally speaking, lying is not our natural state–we find it difficult. It’s a logical mindset.

Bluntness and rudeness are not the same thing. I am seen as being rude because I can be too honest. I may miss the social clues that ‘why are you doing that?’ is sometimes not a question but a command to stop whatever it is I am doing. On the other hand, I find it near impossible to say ‘I do like your new coat’ when I find it a glaring mess designed by a colour blind chimp. ‘I don’t think it really suits you’ is as diplomatic as I can muster.  As far as faithfulness goes though I always intend to do what I say. Though I am good at (or bad at) agreeing to things without consulting my diary. I intend to do things, but my memory of my commitments is appalling.

Like everyone else, I need the Holy Spirit. I need a shot of more faithfulness.

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