The end of one year and the beginning of another year is always a good time to look back over one’s life and ask where God has been moving and what He has been doing. It’s a good time to reflect on the big moments of the year, the challenges, and the victories. For believers, we often reflect on God’s faithfulness through the past year, and we look forward to His faithfulness in the New Year. But for some, it may be difficult to look back and see God’s faithfulness.

2 Corinthians 1:10 says, “He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.”

This is a great verse to remind us of God’s faithfulness, but before we just take that verse and start applying it to our life, it is so important that we give context. Anytime you read Scripture, it’s tempting to take it as a word for us and for 2025, but we need to ask: Who was the author? Who was the intended audience? What was going on at that time? Well, the Apostle Paul was the one who was writing this letter to the church in Corinth. And we know that because 2 Corinthians 1:1 state just that – that Paul and Timothy were writing to the church of God that’s at Corinth and with all the saints who are in the whole of Achaia. As you read through the first ten verses, you learn that there’s a lot of stuff that went on in the world at that time for believers:

• In verse 4 Paul says that God comforts us in all our affliction so that we’re able to comfort others when they’re having an affliction.
• In verse 5, he says we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings.
• In verse 6 he says, “We’re afflicted.”
• He also says in verse 6, “You patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer.”
• And in verse 7 he says, “We know that you share in our sufferings.”
• And then he says in verse 8, “We don’t want you to be unaware of the affliction we experienced in Asia for we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.”
• In verse 9 he says, “Indeed we felt that we had received the sentence of death.”

 So, when Paul says in verse 10, that God rescued him from a perilous death, we have a better idea of what he’s talking about. He had gone through a lot of danger. His life was at risk. And so, he is looking back and he’s telling the church at Corinth that God is the One Who gets the credit for all the saving, delivering, and rescuing that went on in his time of need. He doesn’t hesitate to tell the church, “God’s the One Who saved us. He delivered us. He helped us out of distress. He protected us.” And it wasn’t just one time that God saved Paul and the believers. God was saving them presently, and God would continue to do so in the future. Then Paul continues in verse 10, “It’s in and on Him [Christ] that we’ve set our hope.” That’s where Paul and his fellow believers had put their hope; that’s where they have put their trust – in Christ. It was their joyful and confident expectation.

When you look at verses 4-9, it’s clear that God is going to allow trials to come into our life. We may not understand why, but we just know that it’s going to happen. We shouldn’t be surprised. We’re going to have things that come into our life that are outside of our control – it’s a fact of life. And although God may not cause everything to happen, He does allow some of those things to happen. Sometimes we endure trials because it’s just part of living in a fallen world. It goes with the territory. And yet at other times, we go through trials because God is testing our faith. He’s proving us genuine. But it’s important to know that God is the One in control – even then. And how important for Paul to know that. Paul was rescued once, he was rescued twice, he was rescued over and over – and yet, in the future, he would be rescued once again.

That doesn’t minimize what Paul endured. Remember, he was in danger. His life was at risk. He literally says in those verses above that he feared he was going to die in the midst of his persecution. Throughout all that Paul endured, God was still in control. There are some denominations and ways of thinking in the world today that are against suffering. Some people are just not comfortable with the fact that God allows suffering to happen on this earth. There’s even a common saying that is often shared: “God’s never going to give you more than you can handle.” That’s a lie! God will absolutely give you more than you can handle! Ask anyone who has every lost a child, lost a loved one to cancer, gone through a cancer diagnosis and treatment themselves, endured rape, or any other devastating situation. They know that’s a lie, because they went through something that was definitely more than they could handle. The Apostle Paul doesn’t sugar-coat it. He thought he was literally going to die. Have you ever been there? Have you ever been in a situation where you were going through something devastating? Maybe it was with your health, maybe it was with an accident, or another circumstance where you thought you were not going to live through it. That’s what Paul was facing. And imagine somebody walking up to Paul and saying, “Oh Paul, God’s never going to give you more than you can handle.” That’s not even biblical! At some point in life, you will face a situation that is more than you can handle – and the reason is so that you will turn to God who can handle everything. You’re weak. He is strong. You cannot handle all that life brings you – and it’s for a good reason. It’s to point you back to the Lord. It’s to make you depend on Him. He knows you can’t do it on your own strength, but sometimes He allows those situations to come into your life to remind you of that. Sometimes we think that we are strong in our own might, our own strength, our own power, until God allows a situation to happen in our life where we suddenly remember, “I can’t do this. I am not in control. I don’t have a grip on what’s happening to me. I need help. I need God. I need the Lord to help me and intervene and protect me and save me and guide me.”

Look back at verse 6, “If we are afflicted it is for your comfort and salvation.” How does salvation come from affliction? By the reminder that you can’t save yourself. I heard a pastor say one time, talking about how God controls the circumstances and protects us and this pastor said that when God puts us into the furnace of our affliction or trial or struggle, that God is the One Who keeps His hand on the thermostat and His eye on the thermometer. He knows how hot to let that trial get, and He knows how long to leave us in it. And sometimes it does feel like it’s too much and we’re at the point of death, but He is still in control. We see this in the Old Testament with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the fiery furnace. Do you think that fiery furnace was more than they could handle? Absolutely! What would they say if somebody walked up and said, “Boys, God’s never going to give you more than you can handle.” Oh, really? So, being thrown in a fiery furnace where there is no chance of surviving… that’s not more than you can handle?! Or how about Daniel in the lion’s den? Was he given more than he could handle? How was he to know that he wouldn’t make it out of there alive? He probably would have been like Paul, thinking, “I thought I was sentenced to death.” And I bet the three men in the fiery furnace felt the same way. But looking back, they’re able to say, “God delivered me from my trial!”

And God delivers us from our trials too, right? We can see God’s hand when we look back on our lives. And sometimes he doesn’t always rescue us or save us immediately and sometimes it’s not always in the same way. Some people that are stricken with cancer will die with that cancer, whereas other people who have health issues are healed. They’re delivered from those health issues, and their life is spared. Two people may get in a car wreck, and one dies and one comes out injured but still retains their life. So how does God save us? It’s not always that He delivers us in the same way. Sometimes it’s from the trial, but other times it’s in or through that trial. So we really have to be careful taking a verse like 2 Corinthians 1:10 and telling people God saves us and He’s still going to save us – with the implication that nothing bad will ever happen to you as if you were somehow immortal in your earthly body. Yes, God saves us. Yes, God delivers us from perilous situations. But don’t put a definition to what that saving and delivering looks like. That’s not for us to define. We need to keep in mind all the verses that come before and they are talking about comfort. God promises to comfort us in our suffering and trials no matter what the outcome is.

Daniel 3:13-18 says, “Nebuchadnezzar in furious rage commanded that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego be brought. So they brought these men before the king. Nebuchadnezzar answered and said to them, “Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, that you do not serve my gods or worship the golden image that I have set up? Now if you are ready when you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe, and every kind of music, to fall down and worship the image that I have made, well and good. But if you do not worship, you shall immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace. And who is the god who will deliver you out of my hands?” Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter.  If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.”

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego could say with confident assurance in their trial and time of persecution that they would continue trusting God – not matter what. Even if God does not allow their lives to be spared, they would never deny their faith. Can you say that? Do you have a personal relationship with the Lord? When you go through trials in life, will you still stand with the Lord, trust Him, love Him, obey Him, be faithful to Him? Even if He doesn’t intervene and do what you want Him to? Even if He doesn’t prolong your life on earth? Even if He doesn’t cure your loved one? Is He still good? Is He still God? For these three men in the fiery furnace, and for Daniel in the lion’s den, and for countless others recorded all throughout the Bible, the answering was a resounding YES! They have a “no matter what” faith. Don’t you want that in the New Year?

Yes, God is faithful. What are some of the things that the bible says specifically He’s faithful to do?

• He’s faithful to give you a way out of temptation (1 Corinthians 10:13).
• He is faithful to forgive you of sin (1 John 1:9).
• God is faithful to strengthen and protect you from the enemy (2 Thessalonians 3:3).
• He’s faithful to love His children (Deuteronomy 7:9).
• God is faithful to have mercy and compassion Lamentations 3:22-23).
• He’s faithful to sanctify believers (1 Thessalonians 5:23-24).

All of these things are ways that God is faithful to minister to your heart. It’s an internal comfort that He is faithful to provide you. It is not always external, for people to see on the outside. Many times, where we see God’s faithfulness is in our times of sin and the way that He sanctifies us. Maybe it’s with envy, unforgiveness, jealousy, anger, greed, pride, insecurity, lust, gossip, or complaining. We can look back and see where the Lord met us in those times and how we let the Holy Spirit have His way. That internal change will be evident on the outside in the way that it changes you. When you experience God’s faithfulness in the past, and you are experiencing it right now in the present, you will not be the same person. God’s faithfulness encourages you in your faith so that you have greater confidence and hope and trust in the Lord that He will be with you through anything and everything you encounter. He will never leave you or forsake you. He may not prevent every bad thing from happening to you, but He promises to be with us through it. And that is the hope and the assurance and the encouragement that we would do well to apply today.

Has God been faithful to you? Can you prove it? Do you trust that He will be faithful again? And have you shared that with somebody? Have you shared how God has been faithful in the past? Because maybe you can help someone see how God is faithful even now in their current situation.

If you have never experienced the faithfulness of God yourself, or there’s never been a point in your life where you have seen Him work, here’s some Good News. There’s one more way God is faithful in the bible: He is faithful to save! He will always and forever answer the call of someone’s heart for Him to save them. There will never be a moment when someone reaches out and asks the Lord for salvation that He will not give that to them. And that can be the first time that you experience God’s faithfulness. So, if you have never experienced that in your life before, you can make that day be today. Romans 10:9-10 tells us that if you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.