DaySpring Daily Word of Inspiration: 1Kings 8:56 – Praise be to the Lord, who has given rest to his people Israel just as he promised. Not one word has failed of all the good promises he gave through his servant Moses.
What has God promised you today? What has assured you of in this life? More importantly, do you believe that you’re experiencing the promises of God in your Christian life?
These questions point to a few different things however today, we’ll only deal with two. The first item to address is the fact that God’s promises are good as gold! Once God decides to give you something, you will have it. Period! Well you say, “The bible says whatever you ask, I will give it to you” but I haven’t gotten my new car, my new man/woman, or my new house yet, so God is lying. How dare us! The first part of that scripture says “if you hold to my teachings……” so maybe we have not because we can’t uphold our end of the bargain. We can’t shortchange God’s ability to do what he says because we’re prone to not doing what we need to do. Suppose you tell your child that they are basically allowed to do what they want as long as they do their chores and keep good grades. Now this same child comes home with an “F” on his report card and didn’t clean their room but wanted to go a party that night. What do you do? Do you allow them to still go? You’ve already said that they can do almost anything…. OF COURSE YOU DON’T!!!! Now, did you just go back on your word (promise)? NO, you have just postponed what they could have got if they would have just obeyed. So the promise isn’t rescinded rather on hold until your child gets it together. This is similar to how God treats us. Don’t expect something, if you’re doing nothing! This brings me to point #2.
We can be stubborn people as a human race. One of the weirdest and most famous stories in the bible is the journey through the wilderness that took 40 years. This is extremely important even because of our concentration today. God had PROMISED the people of Israel their own land (a land flowing of milk and honey) but it took them 40 years to get it, why? Did God lie or was he just unable to come through on his promise? It was neither. Oh it was because the distance was extremely far and many people got tired on the trip. Well no, it actually should have taken about 11 days for them to reach the promised-land. What happened then? God still came through on his end. Unfortunately because of whom we are, we can hinder what God has for us – even his promises, especially if we’re not doing what we’re supposed to be doing! At times I believe I can do what I want and still have the benefits that I think I should have. Unfortunately, we can’t have our cake and eat it too. What promises does God have for you that you keep having delayed because of your actions, mindset or disobedience?
How lucky are we to even get a promise from an all-powerful God as if we deserve his attention? We need to grasp this point because if we can, we will gain a better sense of the love and holiness of God.
God’s word has promises for each and every person on this planet and he can follow through on making his promises happen. The question is never “if God” can come through on his promises, the question is how long are YOU going to hinder his promises from being released to you? The Israelites learned this the hard way but recognized later that even in their mess ups, mistakes, setbacks and constant disobedience, God still fulfilled his promises to them. Their promises were delivered to them by Moses, now we have God’s holy word to hear our promises from – the direct breath of God! If he can make good on promises he gave to a man to say, how much more should we be able to believe it from his own mouth?
Today we have a decision to make. The bible is full of promises for God’s people. We can either be like the Israelites and journey our whole lives to get our promises, only to get them later in life or not at all (because a lot of them died and never received the promised-land) OR we can learn from their mistakes and understand that we have something to do so God isn’t slow to fulfill his promises in our lives. God’s promises will be made good. Will you receive them or your generations to come? Praise God that he is the God who comes through on his promises. In Jesus’ name, AMEN!