I have been reading in the book of Psalms for the entire month of June. One thing God has reiterated to me as I have read through the Psalms in 2013 is that He always keeps His promises. We’ve all heard what’s on my heart today….and heard it and heard it and heard it if we’ve been in church for long. Funny thing is though, I know very few who actually live a lifestyle of ‘believing God keeps His promises’!
God has made lots of promises to His children! I may not ‘see’ the answer to the promise right now, but I believe the answers are there, waiting to manifest, in His perfect timing!
Here are just a few verses of the many that reference our ‘promise keeping God’. They are quoted from the New Living Translation:
Psalms 18:30 God’s way is perfect. All the LORD’s promises prove true. He is a shield for all who look to Him for protection.
Psalms 138:2 I bow before Your holy Temple as I worship. I praise Your name for Your unfailing love and faithfulness; for Your promises are backed by all the honor of Your name.
Psalms 145:13 For Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom. You rule throughout all generations. The LORD always keeps His promises; He is gracious in all He does.
Psalms 146:6 He made heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them. He keeps every promise forever.
I find we as ‘believers’ often say we believe this but then we act like we don’t. Why is this? If we trust Him to save us for all eternity, why don’t we trust Him with our here and now? He is not only faithful to His promises once we die, He is faithful to all the promises that pertain to our daily lives. But we tend to believe our circumstances and what we see with our eyes rather than what He says is true. He tells us to:
2 Corinthians 5:7 (ESV) for we walk by faith, not by sight.
However, I am so often guilty of ‘walking by sight and not by faith’. I feel like Paul when he said:
Romans 7:15 For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.
Scripture tells us repeatedly ‘He is mighty to save’. In fact, I have these words hanging on my wall where I can see them all the time.
I’ll never forget the day He revealed to me those words didn’t just mean to save me from my sins and for eternity, but He meant to save me in every area of my life! He is our Savior and I believe He saves us every day, even when we don’t recognize it. He saves us from accidents (that traffic delay that so frustrated you might just have been Him at work saving you.); He saves us in our finances (I don’t know of too many people who haven’t had some kind of miraculous intervention in the area of their finances.); He saves us from ourselves in too many ways to count; and the list can go on and on.
You may ask as I have….well, why doesn’t He save us every time? I can’t answer that question but He can:
Isaiah 55:8-9 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
We won’t ever understand everything! If we could understand God, He wouldn’t be God! We can’t bring Him down to our level of understanding, we must rise to His.
So each person has a choice to make—to believe or not. Is He mighty to save, or isn’t He? Is His saving power limited to certain areas of our lives or does it apply to every area of our lives?
Will we do this:
Psa 106:12 Then His people believed His promises. Then they sang His praise.
Or will we chose to do this?
Psalms 78:22 (AMP) Because in God they believed not [they relied not on Him, they adhered not to Him], and they trusted not in His salvation (His power to save).
Psalms 106:24 The people refused to enter the pleasant land, for they wouldn’t believe His promise to care for them.
God gives us the choice. He doesn’t force us to believe, He doesn’t coerce us to believe, He doesn’t demand we believe, He only lays out the benefits of believing and lets us make the choice.
Mark 9:23b “Anything is possible if a person believes.”
Mark 11:24 I tell you, you can pray for anything, and if you believe that you’ve received it, it will be yours.
Luke 1:45 You are blessed because you believed that the Lord would do what He said.”
My prayer when I find myself walking in doubt as to IF He’ll keep His promises is this:
Mark 9:24 The father instantly cried out, “I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief!”
We really can’t do it without His help. The paradox is that He tells us to believe and then gives us the ability to believe in His power and strength…just like He tells us to obey and then gives us the strength to obey.
But it all boils down to just one question:
Will YOU believe?
One Response to God Keeps His Promises!