We have a hard time believing promises until they are kept because we have we have seen them broken too many times. In that way, we think promises aren't are to be broken, but they can be broken as simply as they are made.
Promises do not seem to be worth basing our lives on.
I just finished reading Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret for the 5th or 6th time. My uncle gave it to me to read around 20 years ago but I was much too young and much too fearful to understand the message. I was too immature to "get" the missionary's life and the joys and agonies that came with his gift of faith in a Faithful God.
Mr. Taylor's story didn't resonate with me until I needed to hear it. It isn't that I have grown "older" or "more mature" necessarily, just more desperate.
That's where I am again. Needing someone to constantly remind me with his life that I can trust the promises of the Father. Slow hearted as I am so often, I need someone around that says "see, I told you our Father could be trusted!" Many times that is my wife or a good friend, but this time it was a man long gone Home whose life reminds me that the world of radical, deep [read: normal] trust is the REAL world in Gods kingdom.
Oh, how much the Father would do if we would give him room by giving up fear that leads to small heartedness?! Fear begets more fear, but one act of restful faith in Gods promises dissipates fear and opens our eyes (even if too slowly) to a world where we are free to risk big things that would show how faithful the Father really is. What a big world that is!
Promises, though, are not all sweet and milk toasty. Many seem to inspire deeper fear ("the world will hate you" "I will show him how much he must suffer for my name"), but that isn't a new fear. It's the same old fear that was only awakened when it was heard.
But even in that, the Father beckons us to draw near to him with a faith the people entrenched in the thinking of this world would call foolish and reckless. Those who live the faith of Jesus and who feast on his promises see that the World is an illusion set up by the workers of darkness to draw our attention away from the Jesus who can master the elements of nature by walking on water and fearfully fix our gaze on the wind and the waves.
So, in finishing this book, I am sad to miss out on meeting with my deceased mentor in the life of Christ. So many times the Lord has used Mr. Taylor's story to remind me that He is in our story... at just the right time. I guess now it is time to live what I have been taught.
More than anything, though, I long to know that breaking promises is not in God's character. If that is true, then I can bet my life and everything I care about on them.
Father, show your faithfulness by giving us a heart-felt faith in who you say you are. Make your words more real to us than the narrative spoken to us by the world. May we not depend on faithless, worldly means to live out the lives you have given us. For your names sake, show your strength in our weakness. May your Word by our deepest encouragement and may praying in fellowship with you be the place where we depend on you and know you are coming through. Proclaim your faithfulness to your promises and your character in our lives so that everyone around us will know you are alive and that you for us because of Jesus.
In Jesus' name, for his sake in the hearts of all around us (including us)
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