Do you always keep your promises? God does!
1 John 4:8 “But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”
If my mom told me she would be at my concert, I could trust her to be there. If my dad told me we were going to work in the garden in the morning, guess where we were at sunup. My parents kept their promises. There we some I wished they would not have kept. “You are going to get it when we get home.” There were some I was excited about. “What do you want for Christmas?”
There were some promises they simply couldn’t keep. Sometimes circumstances got in the way. Sometimes life threw a curveball. My parents loved me, but they were human just like the rest of us. Sometimes money got in the way. Sometimes work got in the way. Sometimes it was impossible to keep a promise.
God has given us many promises in His word. Some are listed below and unlike me or my dad or my mom, God’s promises never fail. He always keeps His word.
He promises to never let the enemy pluck us from His hand (John 10:28-29). Once we believe, we are secure in our belief. That doesn’t mean we will not wander or sin. We will. We do. But we are promised to always be His if our faith is real.
He promises us eternity with Him in Heaven (1 John 5:11). There is a continuation of life with Him, but it will not be like this life, it will be perfect. It will be the way it was intended when God made Adam. We can count on His promise. He will take our corruptible selves and change us into the incorruptible. He will usher us into His presence, and we will live a sinless life with Him.
The problem we have is we take things out of context.
Luke 12:19 says, Then I’ll say to myself, “You have many goods stored up for many years. Take it easy; eat, drink, and enjoy yourself.”’
Doesn’t this sound like a wonderful thing? God tells us to, “eat, drink, and be merry.” Go ahead. Have a great time. You’ve worked hard and deserve to take it easy. But this is not what God is saying at all! In the next verse we see the completion of the idea. “But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life is demanded of you. And the things you have prepared — whose will they be?” Luke 12:20. This parable is not about retiring and living the good life until the end of your days. It is about storing up riches in heaven instead of storing them up on earth. Does this mean to forsake planning for the future? No! It means to not forsake doing God’s work and only concentrating on how to live an easy life here.
But don’t always expect things to go your way either. I saved and worked for retirement and after 32 years teaching public school, God called me into the ministry. Not only that, He called me to an area of ministry where I didn’t want to serve! I love what I am doing for God. He knew I would. I thought retirement was what was next. He knew I had more to do. I just didn’t have a clue. That is how it often works out. We follow God wherever He leads with not so much a clue as to how it will turn out. But if we join God in what He is doing, it always works out for His glory.
Still, we prefer to take things out of context. We want things our way. We work hard to make God’s word say what we want it to say instead of simply doing the hard thing and following God’s word.
“God is love.” But God is not just love. He is also righteous, jealous, and merciful.
We love 1 John 4:8. “The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” We tell each other that “God is love.” How could He reject anyone when He loves everyone? He is the embodiment of love. But what about verse 9. “God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him.” Without the Son, there is no life. God loved us to the point of giving a gift, a way out of sin, but we cannot assume His love will save us without accepting the gift from the Son. You see, God is love, but He is also jealous, and He will not share us with anyone or anything. He is righteous. He will not allow us to enter into His presence without being cleansed from our sin, and that can only be done through the blood of Christ and our accepting Him as Lord and Savior. He is holy. He alone is worthy of being praised. When we take pride in the work we have done, we have done it for ourselves, not for Him. Yes, He is love, but He is not only love.
God is sovereign. He is always in control. Things don’t always go our way but they always go His way, even if we get in the way. Adam sinned. Man fell. Jesus came, died, arose, ascended. We can be made whole again through faith in Christ. God’s way prevails.
There it is. God’s promise. He will get His way. He has made a way for us. Jesus is the way. There is only one way. Jesus. And don’t forget, God always keeps His promises.
Worshiping God 