What truth is held in that statement. We throw around the word "promise" about as much as we throw around the word "love." It has lost the weight and responsibility it once bore. Now, "promise" is used almost as a form of trickery, to convince someone to trust but never intending to do what is "promised."
Not so with God and His promises. God cannot lie, so we know that His promises are true and available freely to all of His children.
He's taught me so much about this lately. In just over a month, at the rate we are going, my mother and I will literally be homeless. That is a thought that strikes quite a bit of fear into my heart. We crunched numbers last night and it seems near impossible to get by. We humans do that. We try to put God in a box, make faith conform to logic, bind His power within our numbers. When He doesn't fit, we get discouraged and basically throw in the towel, forgetting all that He has promised.
Hebrews 13:5 "Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee."
and the one I really clung to last night and still do:
Matthew 6:25-34
Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things . But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."
He doesn't promise us a 3 story home with brand new appliances, a 2 car garage, inground pool and healthy retirement fund. He promises to take care of us, however He sees fit. There is no maliciousness with my God. It isn't as if He is sitting up in Heaven, watching us scramble around and finding amusement.
I told a friend yesterday, that I wish God just gave us all of the answers. I wish He just dropped a scroll from Heaven that said, "Do this." If He did that though, I don't believe there would be room for faith.
Heb 11:1 "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. " If we had all the answers, we wouldn't have faith. Faith is not having the answers, not seeing an answer, not seeing the possibility of an answer and trusting that there is one. Trials such as this, are meant to strengthen our faith to increase our dependency on Him.
Just because He is with us, just because He is all-loving does not mean that we are spared from struggling; He did not promise that. It does not mean we are spared from hurt or trial; He did not promise that. What it does mean is that He is with us- as a comforter and companion. What is does mean is that what is happening to us, somehow, someway works into His plan. Many times, I have a hard time grasping it. His promises are true. They are constant. He is God and I, simply, am not.
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