Standing on the Promises of God
Beginning in May I will begin a new sermon series on God’s promises to us. I am excited because there are so many! I honestly would not have enough room to list them all in this article and so I am looking forward to sharing with you promises that we, as God’s children, can count on in our journey here on earth and beyond in the coming weeks.
Last week I accidentally made a typo in the bulletin and instead of having the congregation sing verses 1, 3 and 5 of that great old hymn, Standing on the Promises, I typed in we would sing verses 1, 3 and 35! Since my husband was the guest preacher, he has been teasing me ever since about the amount of singing we do here at Memorial Park! But you know what? There easily could be 35 verses written about the promises of God and even more for us to sing about!
While that was clearly a typo, I got to thinking about the promises of God today and pulled out our hymnbook to refresh my memory about what that wonderful hymn says about God’s promises. At the top of the hymn is the scripture verse from 2 Peter 1:4, which reminds us, “He has given us His very great and precious promises.” That will be our theme verse in the weeks ahead. The hymn then talks about the promises of Christ; promises that cannot fail, promises from the living Word of God that will help us prevail no matter what life brings and promises to help us daily.
How fortunate we are to have a God that loves and cares for us so much that He is willing to make such promises to us, which is a trait unique to Christianity. Only in Christianity do we have a God that loves humanity so much that He makes promises to us! Think about that for a minute. And its promises He has kept. For example, He has promised us eternal life and He has already brought that to pass through the death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ. Or, take the promise of being the same yesterday, today and forever so that He can be trusted to be the same today just as much as in yesterday years; unlike us who may change our minds about something many times over depending on the mood we are in! Or, take the promise of a Comforter sent in the form of the Holy Spirit to come and be with us after Christ ascended to heaven to help us through our life journey. Or…and the list could go on and on.
As I was reading through the stances of this great hymn, I was struck by how we find out about these wonderful promises. They are contained in God’s Word. If we don’t read God’s Word, we may be missing out on many blessings and reassurances that God has placed there for us. We probably all could come up with the ten commandments with a little bit of thinking but can we name ten blessings directly out of the Word of God?
Psychologists tell us that we live in a harried and nervous world. People suffering from depression and anxiety are at an all time high. Our worst fears are displayed for us daily complements of the news. No longer do you hear of the horrors of war second hand. You can turn your television on and watch people being shot right in front of you! No wonder we have the jitters. But are we spending time with the wrong thing? The Word of God contains promise after promise that’s ours to claim if we but take the time to find out what they are. I challenge you in the weeks and months ahead to begin a study on the promises of God on your own and then come to prayer meeting and church and share how God has manifested that promise in your life!
Why? Because we serve a living God! And because He is God we can rest assured that He WILL be faithful and true to His promises to us. If you ever doubt that, just look at the Cross! The hymn, Standing on the Promises, ends with this great promise:
“Standing on the promises, I can not fall,
Listening every moment to the Spirit’s call,
Resting in my Savior as my All in All,
Standing on the promises of God.”
No matter what life brings to us we have this assurance that God will be with us no matter what. No ifs, ands, or buts! The God of the universe; the Creator of heaven and earth has promised never to leave us nor forsake us. We can rest in Him as our All in All. Now that’s a promise worth holding onto! See you in church on Sunday!
Blessings,
