A Promise is a Promise

This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture that reject fear and champion faith in God. God has made thousands of promises to mankind, and we have a legal right to expect and claim the performance of those promises. The promises of God are good and meant for our best. Sometimes the promises may involve change or challenges, but we don't need to fear because God backs us up. We are called to go and do, trusting that God will provide and take care of us. We can rest in Him and give our cares to Him through praise, thanksgiving, and prayer. God loves us and eagerly anticipates all that we will experience. Welcome to Fear No Fear. Grace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. May the Holy Spirit embrace you today. This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture. We reject fear in any and all forms. Fear is a spiritual force, the currency of darkness and ignorance. It's what we inherited when Adam gave up his faith and Satan uses it to keep people down. His only weapon is words. If he can get you believing or looking at words of fear, he's got you. Instead, we champion faith as an allegiance to God, as a belief and trust and loyalty to the Lord God Almighty. We accept the evidence of his word as unvarnished truth, as is, just as it's written. We get close to his perfect love through the word, and perfect love casts out fear. 1 John 4.18 All scripture is taken from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Visit eBible.org Deuteronomy 1.21 Behold, Yahweh your God has set the land before you. Go up, take possession, as Yahweh, the God of your fathers, has spoken to you. Don't be afraid, neither be dismayed. A promise is supposed to be a reason to expect something, but it can be more than that. It can be a legally binding declaration that gives the person to whom it is made a right to expect or claim the performance or forbearance of a specific act. Merriam-Webster definition. That sounds about right. God is a God of right, of law, of justice. He makes promises to us. There are about 7,500 to 8,000 promises in the Bible from God to us. That isn't counting any human promises invoking God or promises to each other because of something God said. That's only direct promises from God to man. God has made about 8,000 legally binding declarations to mankind. Humanity has a legal right to expect and claim the performance of Yahweh God Almighty in relation to those promises. Do you get how powerful this is? Do you understand the significance of thus says the Lord? It is a staggering thing that a sovereign almighty God would be willing, even eager, to say, if you then I to his creation. It is a wonder of the Lord. From that view of wonder, look at what a promise is. He tells us to go and do something or that we're going to do something. He tells us that under these specific conditions, he is going to do something, which means that if we obey the conditions set forth in the promise, we will be able to go and do that thing. If we obey the conditions set forth in the promise, then he will do that thing. This means that if he promises healing, we get healed. If he promises victory, we have victory. If he promises spiritual renewal, we are spiritually renewed. If he promises salvation, we are saved. If he promises prosperity, we will be prosperous. The great thing about the promises of God is that they are all part of the nature of God, which means there's nothing bad in the promises. Take prosperity. He doesn't promise riches. He promises prosperity. That may include riches, but it may not. Will you stumble if you're rich? Will you fall away if you're surrounded by the best possessions you can imagine? Will you get covetous and start to hoard and generally become someone unable to bless those around you? If you were any of those things, then those things won't be part of your prosperity. God only gives good things, James 1.17. He will never, ever give you anything that will cause you to stumble, James 4.3. All God's promises will be good for us because he gives us good things. But what about all that you'll be taken into slavery stuff? Well, there were promises like this. This is true. And they seem to be negative. This is true. But look at the whole thing, not just at the wording of the promise. Whenever God was telling them in the Old Testament that if they did not walk in his ways, they would be carted off, it wasn't a negative promise. It was a declaration of consequence. He wanted them to walk in his ways and enjoy his blessing. If they refused, they were going to put themselves in a place where a negative consequence would occur. It was a promise, but it was a promise after a plea for obedience. Every negative promise can be read in reverse to get a positive promise. If they do walk in his ways, they won't be carted off. Now, in the New Testament, we have the same kind of promise. Because now we're not talking about temporary wiping of sins. We're not talking about rules and regulations. We're not specifically talking about stewardship of the land. We're talking about eternal life. We're talking about a behavioral witness to the world around us so that they will want to choose eternal life too. We're talking about relationship, not just judicial procedure. Our promises are focused on our choices and our faith, on our authority, on our dominion, on our relationship. If we, then he. If we, then they won't. If we, then his reward to us. And yes, again, there is talk about negative consequences. But always with a plea to not choose that. Always with a plea or an instruction or a, hey, you might want to, asking us to avoid it, to walk in the mercy and grace of the Lord that we have as we choose life and relationship in Jesus with the Father through the Spirit. New or old, God's promises are good and meant for our best, our best life, our best circumstances, and our best eternal consequence. Now, sometimes that promise means change. We tend not to like change. Sometimes the promise has a challenge in it for us, something out of our comfort zone. Well, the human propensity for not liking change is the human propensity in the flesh toward selfishness. We don't like change because we already have something and we don't want to let it go. Even if the new thing might be better, we want to hang on to what we have because the flesh is selfish. Fear can also kick up. Well, what if it goes wrong? Well, what if it this or what if it that? But I say, why fear the consequences or the actions that that promise from God may take? It could be a move to another town or a country. Will it be easy? Maybe not. But why fear it? Maybe it's a change in our life, a change in our circumstances, or maybe we don't know something, like where the next rent check is going to come from or where food is going to show up on our plates. These can be scary things that fill us with anxiety and fill our time with worry and stress. When God says, stop it, just stop. When he gives us a promise, he gives us. He gives us this territory. The place that he has for you, it's your territory that he has given you, whether for a day or a week or a year or however long that he can use you in that place, doing what specifically he has for you to do. It doesn't matter where the place is physically located. He has it for you. Are you in tune with him? Are you asking him what to do? Great. Then stand on his promise. He's saying go. That go is a promise that you can, in fact, go. Whether the going is actual movement, a promotion, or trusting him to provide where we don't see it, it's still a promise. It doesn't mean we get to sit back and do nothing, but it doesn't mean we have to stress about it. It means we can choose not to fear as we walk in circumstances that in the natural can be fearful. You see, we have no reason to fear if God is backing us. If God is backing us, all that negative that can stir up the fear, it can't touch us. If it can't touch us, why would you fear? Imagine a deep diving suit. If you have that suit on and you trust in its ability to do its work, you will then dive in the water deeply and you won't be scared because you know the suit will keep you alive. So when it comes to the promises of God, just do what you're called to, and it will work out because what he calls us to, he also equips us to accomplish. 2 Peter 1, 2-4. No fear, no worry, with calm certainty, with knowledge that it will be better than fine. We can go forward. How do we know we can go forward? Because he said go. Jesus talked about it in Matthew 6. See the birds of the sky, that they don't sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns. Your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren't you of much more value than they? Which of you, by being anxious, can add one moment to his lifespan? Verses 26-27. Birds work, but they don't worry. We are called to go and do. Work our job and trust it will be okay. For birds, it is nature or instinct. For us, it is choice, which is why he mentions it so often. Move somewhere and do a new thing. Take a chance. Share a message. Cheer up a coworker. Bless people. We all have things like this to do. When God is the one directing our steps, giving us lands to take that he has given us, don't worry. That's the promise of Psalm 37, 23-26. A man's steps are established by Yahweh. Though he stumble, he shall not fall, for Yahweh holds him up with his hand. I have been young and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken nor his children begging for bread. All day long he deals graciously and lends. His offspring is blessed. Do not fear. Trust him. Every day, rest in him all day long. Give your cares to him through praise, thanksgiving, and prayer. He will keep his promise. He will provide. It will be okay. He says so. Read it. Believe it. Walk in it. You won't regret it. Our daily affirmation of God's love is Ephesians 2.10. Have you ever nested? Planned a child's room while they were still in the womb? Made touch-ups to a home before a loved one moved in? Maybe even planned your living space while the paperwork for your new place, rented or owned, is still being written up? It's an eagerness, an anticipation of the joy and goodness that you'll experience about how perfect it will all be. God is no different. He loves us and is excited for us, for us and all that we will experience. He started planning before we were even a zygote. Now that's love. That is impatience for us to appear. Give him a hug and tell him what a great job he did. Give him a hug and tell him how much you love him because he loves us so much. As we close, remember that you have birth. You were precious and valuable. Declare this. Today, God loves that I, now you, fill in the blank. Was it a meal you made? A smile you gave? Did you get out of bed? Read? Put on socks? There's no wrong answers here. There is no end to God's love and no end to the things about you that he loves each and every day. Pick one. And remember, the Lord loves you just because you're you. 1 John 4, 9-10 tells us, By this, God's love was revealed in us that God has sent his only born son into the world that we might live through him. And this is love. Not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. His perfect love turned away God's wrath because of sin. And it casts out our fear too. See verses 18 and 19. We love because he first loved us. He just loves us. Can't get enough of us. And that is wonderful. See you next time.