God’s Promises

In a relationship don’t you keep your promises? Particularly to your significant other?

God has always kept His promises to us because He loves us. He sent Jesus to pay the debt for our sins and not just American Christians but for all Christians in the world. Yet, somehow we think that we are special and that we deserve His favor. None of us deserve His favor or His grace or His love but God has given us those things because of His love for us not because of what we deserve!

Why would that be true? We have pushed Him out of nearly every government office and building. We have taken Him and His Word out of schools and there are many who are trying to get any reference to Him out of our country so they won’t have to hear about Him or His Son again.

In Matthew 6: 25, 31-34 God promises to meet our needs. Here is the text of those verses:

25Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not life more than meat, and the body than raiment? 26Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? 27Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? 28And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: 29And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30Wherefore, if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? 31Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? 32(For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. 33But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

34Take, therefore, no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

Every promise that God made with anyone in the Bible, He has kept. Even if the promise hasn’t come to completion yet. All of the promises leading up to it have been. So why do so many people doubt the existence of God or His love for us? Why is it that one part of humanity considers themselves to be the apple of His eye and yet they don’t seem to follow Him any better than the rest of the world?

God’s promises are sure and yet we doubt Him and His Word all of the time. Do you believe His promises for His provision in your life? I do.

I have been pushing the lawnmower and I will ask Him for a cloud or a little breeze to give me some relief from the heat. Most of the time it is provided. I know that many people won’t ask God for such little things but they aren’t little to me at the time. I have laid before Him the fact that we needed to pay this bill or that one and somehow the money is available. It may be just enough to pay the bill but He provides.

While it is true that many of the promises that are in the Old Testament are not available to us today, the promises in the New Testament are available to each of us who has given their life and their heart to Jesus. I don’t mean walking down and getting wet. I mean real, honest, and completely giving your heart to Him. Changing your life and living each day with Him, reading the Bible and learning more about Him and actually leaning on Him for your day to day, getting by kind of things.

Will God answer the prayers of one of His children who is living day to day with Him? If it’s asking for a million dollars, probably not. But if you are talking to Him and listening to His responses then what you ask for is usually in line with what He wants to give you and He’s waiting for you to ask for it. Is living by His side easy to do? No, it isn’t. There are so many temptations around us and Satan knows exactly which buttons to push to cause you to step off of the pathway that you were on. But, the closer you are walking with God it makes it harder for you to listen to anything that Satan says.

Jesus is your strength…

The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me. My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise him. Psalms 28:7 NIV https://psalm.bible/psalm-28-7

God is always close to you

Hebrews 13:5 says: 5 Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.

As adopted children of God, if you are a believer, we should never covet or be enticed by something that someone else has. We should remember that our relationship with God is worth more than all of the money in the world! I know there is no way to spend it in this world and most people who would see you on a daily basis might not know about it. But the life that each of us has here on Earth is just a little while compared to eternity. Even the lives of the early children of Adam before the flood only lasted for a few hundred years but compare that to 100,000 years or 1,000,000 million years. Looking at those numbers, even Methuselah’s age of 969 years seems small.

Life today is not viewed with the respect that should be given to it. We don’t think about a child in the womb as being a person until they are outside the womb and making noise. People don’t view elders with gray hair as someone to respect and admire for the life they have lived. Historical figures such as George Washington Carver and Abraham Lincoln aren’t looked at with reverence today because they belong to a past that many people want to forget.

Jesus came and died for all of mankind’s sins even though He knew exactly who would believe in Him for their salvation and who will reject it. He took ALL of the sins of mankind on Himself when He was on the cross which is why God had to look away from Him for a time. He was never abandoned on the cross, God was still near Him but He could not look at His Son. God sees all of the trouble and pain which is happening and that has happened in our world. He knows who is responsible for it and for some things Satan is responsible for them…but not all evil comes from Satan.

Just before the flood, God saw that mankind’s heart was set toward evil continually and much of what we see and hear about today is caused by man as well. Humanity is capable of some great evil as history proves to us if people will read it and learn from it. Although they seem to be wanting to change the history that they don’t like these days.

God is always close to us and if we would just listen to His Word and live by it instead of our emotions and our own ideas the world would be a much better place.

It doesn’t matter….

It really doesn’t matter how much or how big you think your faith in God is because He gave you enough to believe in Jesus so you could become His child.

God is our refuge…

Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord , “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.” Psalms 91:1‭-‬2 NIV https://bible.com/bible/111/psa.91.1-2.NIV

The Lord is faithful

But the Lord is faithful, who shall stablish you, and keep you from evil. 2 Thessalonians 3:3 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/2th.3.3.KJV

God is there in time and on time

Some of the attributes of time:

Time moves without legs.

Time only moves in one direction.

Time moves without regard to religion or creed.

Time seems to slow down with anticipation and speed up with our dread of an outcome or our age.

Time will never stop.

God’s promises are always on time and they are never late or early.

Psalm 46: 1-3 says: 1 …God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

2 Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;

3 Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.

God is as near to each of us as our next breath so regardless of the trouble we may be facing, He is there to strengthen us and comfort us in times of trouble. During the past few weeks, we have seen a lot of trouble in our nation and in the world itself. Racial tension has been drawn as tight as a bowstring and it seems to be near the breaking point.

Our people need to be drawing closer to God during this time but it seems that most of the people on the streets and in the news are more interested in pushing God away. This is really nothing new. God has been pushed to the edge of our collective conscience in America and in most other countries as well and it began during the early ’70s or late sixties. Once the people began to move away from Him, it has been very hard to get it to stop or reverse.

Numerous evangelists have preached to those who would listen and some did but the majority didn’t take their message about Jesus and His love for us to heart. I pray that there will be a revival in America and around the world but it seems that the part of the world that does not revere God or Jesus as their Messiah is just not interested. They seem to be inviting as much violence into the world as possible. That is not going to prompt God to send Jesus or the Tribulation any sooner than He has it planned for.

Violence and uprising, looting, and burning will do nothing for their “cause” except to draw the news crews out in force…which is what they want. The truth is not part of their narrative. Yet, they want any reference to ANY historical event from 140 years ago stricken from the public square or from TV or movies. Any reference to a figure which had anything to do with the Civil War regardless of their view on slavery should be taken down or destroyed.

Slavery was never sanctioned by the Bible and God never intended for us to enslave people but people are still being sold into slavery today. Particularly children. We, as a society, need to become more social with each other across racial barriers. In the culture that we live in today, it will be hard to do because of the hate and mistrust that is being spread on the Internet and in the news but it needs to be done!

When parents and grandparents teach their children that they are different from the other children it sends the wrong message. Yes, we have different skin colors and tones but we don’t have to hate each other because of that. Did history record that there were some really terrible things done to people in the past just because of their skin color? Yes, but if we change our view of each other today we can be an instigator of change in that area as well. But we need to look at each other not as black or brown or white or any other shade of color but as people who are made in God’s image.

God listens

Many times we think that He doesn’t hear our prayers and that He doesn’t care but God has loved each of us since long before we were born. He hears your prayers, then if you will be quiet, you will hear Him speak to you and as long as you have faith in Him that doesn’t waver at all…He will take care of all your needs.

He has always heard your prayers, even when you didn’t believe in Him but He couldn’t act on them until you gave your heart to Him. Once you prayed that prayer then you became His child. A real Father takes care of His children’s needs to the best of His or his ability. In God’s case He is able to take care of all your needs regardless of what they may be.

Love cannot be defeated!

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:13 ESV https://bible.com/bible/59/1co.13.13.ESV

In Him we lack nothing

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. Psalms 23:1‭-‬2 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/psa.23.1-2.KJV