Lord of the Promise

Fulfillment of Promises

Andrew Murray said, "A promise from God is worth just as much as fulfillment." The Lord has given us well over 3,000 promises in the Bible, and some people count as many as 8,000. And what about the promises all around us every day? Surely, every sunrise is a promise in itself, as is every rainbow and every bud on every tree in spring. This is how God has designed His world, for we serve a God Who keeps His Word. It behooves us to know that Word, for it is our weapon against our foe. We think of our Sword of the Spirit as verses we quote against the dangers of temptation or persecution, but our sword is every bit as useful in times of disappointment, discouragement, and even drudgery in facing the duties of everyday life. I don't know where I would be without the promises God has given me, and I often use the same ones over and over--or, rather, the Lord uses them for me, gently reminding me of them when I need them most.

One of the most famous scenes in religious literature comes from John Bunyan's classic, The Pilgrim's Progress, in which pilgrims Christian and Hopeful are locked in Doubting Castle, in the stronghold of Giant Despair. We can almost feel the distress stealing over us as we read of their spiritual agony brought on by paralyzing doubt subsequent to disobedience. What was this disobedience? Not some egregious, intentional sin but the desire to follow the lure of By-Path Meadow with its promise of pleasure and enjoyment. Hmmm. How like these pilgrims we are, forgetting that our foe is the master of deception, presenting life exactly the opposite of the way it really is. When we lean on our own understanding, we end up in Doubting Castle, but when we acknowledge the Lord in all things, He will direct our path. But these pilgrims find a victorious way out when Christian suddenly remembers that he has a master key. And what is this key? Faith in the promises of God.

Favorite Promises

Do you have a favorite promise? Have you found it to be a master key that unlocks every difficulty, or have you found some doors strangely locked when you most assumed an entrance? Maybe it's time to take a closer look at those promises. Most promises come with a condition. If we won't meet the condition, we can't use the promise. Certainly, the condition behind using any promise is faith, but often the promise outlines some specific area of obedience. Think, for example, about prayer itself. Psalm 66:18 says, "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me." James 5:16 specifies the prayers the Lord will hear, "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much." The condition here even has a precondition: the prayer must be fervent, but a fervent prayer is not enough. It must be offered by a righteous heart.

And what defines this righteous heart? Certainly not any sense of self-congratulation or self-righteousness. This verse begins by saying, "Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that you may be healed." Oh, can there be anything more beautiful than that--the mutual accountability of believers praying for one another with an effectual fervency that avails much in furthering each other's righteousness and wholeness? Every promise is in a sense a prayer waiting to be prayed, and in order to pray that promise, we first must meet the conditions for our prayers to be heard. And what a sweet, meek, and reverent process this ought to be, contrary to any self-willed boasting of our own faith in naming and claiming the promises of God. We cannot approach God's Word with a point and click presumption to show off our spiritual prowess. On the contrary, it behooves us as we pray to ask the Lord to give us the promises He intends for our particular situation.

Forgotten Promises

With a proper view of prayer and of the promises we are to pray, we can embrace the words of the Apostle Peter in II Peter 1:1-4 with new appreciation. Peter sees the promises of God as serving one end: not the acquisition of our wants but the equipment for our needs. Watch his eloquent words unfold phrase after phrase in this passage. After introducing himself first as a servant and then as an apostle of Jesus Christ to those who have "obtained like precious faith," Peter prays for "grace and peace" to be "multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord, according as his divine power has given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who has called us to glory and virtue: whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, that by these you might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust" [italics mine]. Wow, this one passage serves to correct a whole worldview that surrounds us every day--the idea that the end result of salvation is not sanctification or transformation but merely justification.

Dear friend, what could we possibly want more in our lives than to become better people? And how often do we settle for less, not even realizing that God's Word promises us victory here most of all? Have you become weary with the low standards all around you, feeling as if you are being sucked into an undertow of defeat that even other Christians are gaslighting you into thinking is normal? The idea that Jesus can save you from hell but that He cannot save you from sin is nowhere to be found in God's Word. The promises for spiritual transformation are not only precious, they are "exceeding" and "great." These promises give me the power in Christ to partake of the divine nature while "escaping" the corruption that is in the world through lust. Consider Peter's credibility here. He almost lost to the corruption that is in the world through lust--no, not the lust of the flesh, but the lust for people's good opinion. He denied the Lord out of the fear of others' disapproval. And the Apostle Paul later even called him out as a hypocrite for his fear of the legalistic Judaizers (Galatians 2:11-14).

But despite some very public defeats, Peter lived and died victoriously, following his own admonition as recorded in the rest of this passage: "And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity [love]. For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that you shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ" (II Peter 1:5-8). This is the same fruit of which Paul writes in Galatians 5:22-23 and of which Jesus speaks in John 15:1-7. But this fruit-bearing is not optional. Peter goes on to say, "But he who lacks these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and has forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if you do these things, you shall never fall, for so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" (II Peter 1: 9-11). And if you do not do these things, you will fall. Peter should know, and he makes the conditions clear.

Fidelity to the Promises

We can be like my mighty white oak tree that enjoyed that slow, steady growth year after year, meekly, quietly, unobtrusively adding ring after tight ring--virtue [goodness] to faith, knowledge to virtue, temperance [self-control] to knowledge, patience to temperance, godliness to patience, kindness to godliness, and love to kindness--such that even a vicious lightning strike could not make it fall. It was grounded in the soil, its roots running as deep as its canopy was wide. This is how we ought to view the promises of God, for, like the words of Isaiah, those who "take root downward" will "bear fruit upward" (Isaiah 37:31). If we would claim the promises of God above ground, we need to take root in them below ground. The soil of promise is God's Word itself, for Jesus said, "If you abide in Me, and my words abide in you, you shall ask what you will, and it shall be done unto you" (John 15:7). But the reverse is also true. The next time we find a locked door where we thought we had inserted the key of promise, maybe a little reverse engineering would be in order. If we have asked what we will and nothing happened, could that be because God's Words are not abiding in us?

We live in a "Christian" culture that mistakes sensationalism for obedience, success for spirituality, and faith for faithfulness. Follow almost any megachurch celebrity and marvel at his or her audacity. I wouldn't even know what to call the spirit that emanates from so many of them. But one after another has fallen into egregious sin which they justified to themselves at the time. Their defenders are many. But their demise was anything but necessary. Anyone who boasts of colossal defeat in the Christian life is not only not applying the promises of God to live that life but is ignoring--if not outright denying--the existence of the promises themselves. A life of quiet obedience in Christ cannot be traded for all the millions that ears-tickling preachers and tinkling song artists have claimed. Yes, I confess to Googling their annual income and sometimes the palace(s) they live in. But I have also witnessed a poverty of belief in the promises that matter most in this life--the promises to become like Jesus in the pursuit of holiness.

Paul writes in II Corinthians 1:20, "For all the promises of God in Him are yes, and in Him Amen, unto the glory of God by us." And, of all the promises most dear, there is nothing like the Lord's promise to "make a way in the sea" of our sin and to make a "path in the mighty waters" that would engulf the soul. For we can leave behind the "former things," never even considering "the things of old." Jesus will do "a new thing" that can "spring forth" in a moment--the cleansing touch that makes the leper whole. Paul writes, "But we all, with open face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord" (II Corinthians 3:18). There is no promise of the Lord greater than knowing that we may become like the Lord of promise. Let us reach for this key to unlock any Doubting Castle in which we find our souls imprisoned.