‘You can’t depend on him’ must be one of the saddest things that can be said about a Christian, because it is the polar opposite of what we know to be true about God.
His great plan for his people is to change us progressively into his likeness, so that the image of God is being restored in us believers, in our characters and therefore in our lifestyle, words and actions. So, when the Holy Spirit produces the fruit of the life of God in the souls of redeemed men and women, a key characteristic will be ‘faithfulness’ (Galatians 5.22).
Reliable God
From the very beginning of the Bible this quality is a bedrock foundation of God’s self-revelation. Way back in Genesis 12, he commits himself to Abraham and his descendants in terms of his promises and commands, which we summarise in our thinking as the ‘covenant faithfulness of God’. Everything depends upon that. What God says, he will do. He has the power to fulfil his promises, but he also has the steadfast, unchanging determination to carry them out. He is not one thing today and another tomorrow, like the false gods of our human imagination.