God will keep all the promises He made to you
January 5 - 11, 2025 | Always Peachy Devotionals | God's Promises Week 2
What does a promise mean to you?
Life is loaded with promises. Parents make promises to their children, both stated out loud as well as silently implied. Children make the same kinds of promises to their parents. Business owners and bosses promise to pay their employees a certain wage for an expected amount of work, and employees promise to complete that expected amount of work. Friends promise to show up for each other. Elected officials promise to accomplish the tenants of the platforms that got them into public office.
The list can go on and on and on. We don’t always call them promises. We call them agreements or contracts or relationship goals. But at their heart, they are all promises.
Trusting in someone’s promises has a lot to do with how we go about our daily lives. Here in America, we trust the promises of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. That’s how we are free to speak our minds and to stand on the principles of our individual beliefs.
If you want to reduce the concept to a super basic level, even the genre of the latest book you’ve read is a promise. The author has promised that the story will fit into a certain category, so that the reader can trust what they’re reading. Maybe that sounds like a small, insignificant thing, but, trust me, as a reader it matters. Because if the author has promised you a romance story and they deliver a horror story, that reader is never going to pick up one of your books again.
We encounter the results of promises—kept and broken—in almost every area of our lives. As much as we’d prefer not to admit it, we’ve all broken promises. Sure, we don’t set out to break our promises, but keeping a promise sometimes requires more from us than we can give. Unfortunately, living with the consequences of broken promises is part of the human existence.
Personally, I think that’s the main reason it can be such a challenge to trust God’s promises. If the only example we’ve ever had is how well our friends and family keep their promises, it’s no wonder we doubt that God will be better. If we’ve never given God an opportunity to show His faithfulness to us, we won’t ever experience it.
One of the characteristics of God that is referenced most frequently throughout the Bible is God’s faithfulness. Sometimes that characteristic is paired with love. God’s faithful love or His unfailing love are two phrases that show up in Scripture more times than I can count. Scripture repeats it so often, I think, to remind us that God isn’t like people.
When He makes a promise, He will do it.
Now, granted, you have to understand the context of God’s promises, because many times He makes a promise to a specific person or a specific group of people. You can’t take a promise made to a specific person or people and apply it to every person in the universe. But there are so many general promises that are true for every person in the world, every person in history.
So those are the promises we’re going to look at this week, the promises that God has made to us as individuals. These promises are true for me. They’re true for you. They’re true for your family, your friends, your rivals, your neighbors, and the random dude in the costume outside the oil change place.
Monday - Forgiveness (1 John 1:9)
Tuesday - Peace (Philippians 4:7)
Wednesday - Strength (Jeremiah 17:7-8)
Thursday - Eternal Life (John 4:13-14)
Friday - His Presence (Isaiah 54:10)
Those are just a few of the amazing promises God has given to all of us. Honestly, there are so many promises that relate to everyone that we don’t have time to go through them all in a week. Maybe someday in the future we’ll just do a whole study on God’s promises.
Knowing what God has promised and what He hasn’t can make a tremendous difference in your life. It’s so easy to assume what God has said because our culture is inundated with content that sounds spiritual but has no biblical foundation.
You can’t just assume that what you hear is true. It doesn’t matter who said it. Even the greatest, most respected Bible teachers can be misinformed. The Bible is our source of truth, and if anyone or anything disagrees with what the Bible says, they’re wrong.
I used to think that was too harsh a stance to take. But I’ve gotten a little older now, and I have seen how questioning the truth of Scripture allows the chaos and confusion of the enemy to creep into our lives.
Question everything. God and His Word and His promises are strong enough to hold up under the most stringent interrogation.
With that in mind, let’s look at this week’s memory verse, John 14:13-14.
Read that again. Think about that. Consider what God is actually promising here.
We can ask God for anything.
ANYTHING.
And He will do it.
Right?
Well, that’s what this verse says. That’s what a lot of popular Bible teachers like to say, that you can ask God for a new car, and He’ll give it to you. Or you can ask Him for a big house, and He’ll give it to you. A verse like this means God has to. He promised.
Remember? Question everything. Examine everything. Pay attention. Use your brain.
There are several important qualifiers in these two verses, not the least of which is repeated twice: “anything in my name.”
That doesn’t mean Jesus’ name is a password or a magic phrase that unlocks the mysteries of the universe. That means whatever you ask should bring honor to Jesus. If you’re going to ask it in His name, it needs to be something that He would ask for. It needs to be something that He would want.
The other massively important qualifier is why. Read it again and see if you can identify why Jesus will answer our prayers.
Do you see it? “So that the Son can bring glory to the Father.” The entire purpose of Jesus’ answering our prayers is to bring glory to God. So what we ask Jesus for needs to be in line with what God is doing in our lives. It needs align with what God says is right.
So, no, this passage doesn’t give us the right to treat Jesus like a genie in a bottle. We don’t just wish upon a star and He grants us the desires of our hearts. No.
But when your heart is fixed on following Him, on putting God first, on living your life to glorify God—it doesn’t matter how wild and ridiculous the request—Jesus will do it. He will make impossible things happen. I’ve seen it. More than once.
When our hearts are aligned with His, Jesus will do the impossible for us. And that is absolutely a promise you can count on.
Praying for you this week, my friends!
Amy
For Deeper Study
Read this week’s memory verse, John 14:13-14, again. Now look up James 4:1-3.
How are these verses different from each other?
What reason does James give for why people may not get what they are praying for?
Do you feel like this is a contradiction? Why or why not?
For Reflection
When was a time someone you trusted let you down?
How do you think your perspective of God changed based on how someone else treated you?
Why is it important to question everything you hear instead of just believing it?
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