I Will Sustain You

Again this week we feature an excerpt from The Promises of God ©1998 by Discipleship Publications International. This week’s post is from a chapter that I wrote for the book.

"Listen to me, O house of Jacob,

        all you who remain of the house of Israel,

    you whom I have upheld since you were conceived,

        and have carried since your birth.

  Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he,

        I am he who will sustain you.

    I have made you and I will carry you;

        I will sustain you and I will rescue you.

                                                                                  Isaiah 46:3-4

Those of you reading this book surely represent many age groups. Some of you are still in your youth and can hardly imagine ever growing old. Even if getting old seems like something very far off, think about this: In some way life is not always going to be as it is now. You are going to experience changes and some of them will be a bit unnerving. You may not like to think about it, but some of you who have been healthy will get sick.

I am thinking right now of several friends who are a lot like me. At one time we were all active, energetic, and all involved in the busy schedule of full-time ministry. Then came sickness—while we were still “young”—when people are supposed to have good health. Two of us have multiple sclerosis. The other two have been diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. All of us have made efforts to find solutions, but the sickness is still here. Now we just cannot do what we once did. We still love the kingdom and want to give our best, but our best is different from what it once was.

Some things that you are supposed to deal with only when you get old are happening to us when we are in the prime of life. All of this plays with your mind and affects you emotionally. It affects the way you think about yourself and the kinds of dreams you dare to still have.

 Some of you reading this book will experience some major life changes in the next year or two. The great majority of you will face challenges like these at some point in your life. You may not like to think about it, but it is still true.

But here is the greater and far more important truth: God has promised that whatever life brings, he will be faithfully with us to the very end. In the above passage from Isaiah, God is telling the Jewish nation that he was there at their beginning and he will be with them all the way through. They may age, they may gray, they may lose strength, they may in some ways become as dependent as they were when they were infants (it happens!), but he will remain faithful to them whatever their circumstances. Such a promise made to people under the old covenant is even more true for us under the glorious new covenant.