Have you ever had someone to make a promise to you and break it before the words are barely spoken? Get this one! Have you ever been told, “I’ll be there for you; I got your back,” only to find the ‘so-called promise-maker’ was nowhere to be found in your time of need? One thing that we all have to realize is that man is human with flaws; therefore, he doesn’t have God’s capabilities and never will. If we would all come to that realization, then this kind of disappointment won’t be so great when it hits us. Numbers 23:19 (ESV) says it all about God’s promises. Therefore, believe that God will do what He said He would do!
In our nation, every two-four years we experience the “promissory pie-in-the-sky rhetoric” of some, not all, politicians who never deliver. Some will say anything just to get elected, and we don’t hear from them any more until the campaign comes around again. So it is with people we love and adore who will make promises that they know they cannot keep; thus, causing hard feelings to evolve. In Malachi 3:6-7 (ESV), God revealed, “For I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed. From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the LORD of hosts. But you say, ‘How shall we return?’” I encourage you to read this entire chapter of Malachi as you will learn an invaluable lesson about your promises to God and His promises to us.
When God makes promises, He is faithful to them because “God is not man, that He should lie …” Ask God for what you need, and TRUST that He will bestow it upon you. However, you must trust His timing as well because the Lord said in Isaiah 60:22 (NIV), “When the time is right, I, THE LORD will make it happen.”
Let me briefly share a personal experience about God and His promises. In January 2019 in a courtroom in Alabama, I heard a sentence given to my oldest son that hit me worse than I could ever describe. Two days afterwards, my son called me and told me about a group of people who came to visit him. One of the gentlemen in the courtroom that day recognized my child, and he wanted to hear my child’s side of the story. Therefore, he went to the facility and took his conflict-resolution group with him and the other advisors to meet with my son. After listening to what my son had to say, the gentleman told him to be a mentor to others while he was incarcerated, and he prophesied that my son would be back out one day. He had met my son before at his workplace and did not see in him what he heard in the courtroom. I was driving when my son told me this, so I had to park my car and give God praise because I could not hold my peace …
I came to the realization that God was telling me that day He was going to set things straight for my son, and everything was going to be all right in His time. The waiting has not been easy, but I kept the faith. Twice already in my oldest son’s circumstances, God did what He said He would do on Friday, February 18, 2022 and on this past Friday, January 5, 2024, in that same courtroom! Yes, God will do what He said He would do!
Always abound in the faith, and never leave home without Him!