Power Words - Promises, Promises
Ecclesiastes - 5:5 It is better to say nothing than to make a promise and not keep it.6 Don’t let your mouth make you sin. What is a promise? It is a heartfelt attempt to make something happen when the variables of life itself can be controlled by you. In other words, it AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN!! I know, I know, we want to promises and make things go a certain way but we don't know what may happen in the next minutes, much less in the next day. I am a planner and my plans are pretty well thought out, but in the flow of life my plans get changed and I have to learn to roll with the punches. Proverbs 27:1 Don’t brag about tomorrow, since you don’t know what the day will bring.
To surrender our life to God is to trust Him with every part of it. Paul wrote in Romans 12:2 2 Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect. It is important to seek God's will and His ways and then trust the results. God's promises are true!! Ours promises fall way short of the mark. Promise (def) - a declaration or assurance that one will do a particular thing or that a particular thing will happen. Our assurances are based on God's Word and the reliability of scripture is what we base our life on. Whether good or bad, we can depend on God's promises.
God's Word says that His promises are true. In Joshua 21:15 the children of God, Israel depended on one thing and it is stated as this 45 Not a single one of all the good promises the Lord had given to the family of Israel was left unfulfilled; everything he had spoken came true. Our God is a God that answers prayers and He does fulfill His promises, sometimes whether we believe it or not. Jesus said in Matthew 7:45 Not a single one of all the good promises the Lord had given to the family of Israel was left unfulfilled; everything he had spoken came true. Jesus also said when praying to ask, seek, and knock and in Matthew 7:7 Jesus says 7 “Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. I believe God's Word shows that these promises are not empty promises, but full of the power of God to complete them!
If we begin to believe that some of God's promises are not true, then that thinking will eventually lead us back to our salvation experience and doubting whether we have eternal life in glory with God when we believe in Jesus. Our faith is just that FAITH. This is not a light switch faith, where we turn it on for certain things and not for other things because we can't understand with our human reasoning how God would and could do the thing we bring to Him. God doesn't need us to make any excuses for His lack of power because He is ALL-POWERFUL and will not be denied. Whereas Satan has limited power and in his efforts to derail our faith he tempts us to doubt our God. God is not limited to our belief in Him, but He comes through every time and in every situation with a fulfillment of His promises that cannot be denied. If you doubt His power in fulfilling His promises, then remember this in Romans 8:31 If God is for us, who can ever be against us?
Why the weakness in His churches? Our faith is weak and our trust in God's promises is even weaker. Over a period of time, we began to rely on our own human reasoning and left God and His promises out of our thinking. The end result is a passionless fellowship of believers who don't really trust God and His promises. All we need to do in our personal life is to once again BELIEVE in God's promises and trust His ways per His Word....All of His Word! Our word about what we will do is tainted and weak, but God's promises are true and ageless and when we begin to believe again in those promises we will see God move in an extraordinary way. Have faith again and believe in God's promises and forget your promises because you don't know what tomorrow will hold. In Hebrews 11:1 the writer said Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see. Since we don't know what tomorrow holds our promises are weak at best. But God knows all and His promises are totally pure and true, so just learn to trust HIm.
The Pilgrimage Continues....
David Warren