The Power of a Promise

For the next few weeks we will post excerpts adapted from The Promises of God ©1998 by Discipleship Publications International. This week’s post is by yours truly.

Disappointments with employers, politicians, those who owe us money and maybe even family members have made some of us highly skeptical about promises. Often promises have come to represent efforts to pacify us at the moment. They can be easily made because the promiser does not usually have to fulfill the promise immediately. But if we allow our disillusionment about man and his promises to color our view of the promises of God, we make a terrible mistake. 

The words God put in Balaam’s mouth long ago are still true:

God is not a man, that he should lie,

nor a son of man, that he should change his mind.

Does he speak and then not act?

Does he promise and not fulfill? (Numbers 23:19).

For the next few weeks we will focus on one great fact: God fulfills his promises—every last one of them. The last man you voted for may not have done a very good job doing what he promised, but God is not like that man or like any man. He is trustworthy, reliable and absolutely faithful to every promise he makes. And since he is God, he has the power to do what he has promised to do. A promise from God is as good as a fact. You can rely on it. You can build on it. You can act on it. You can stand on it.