“It is not the promises that God is asking us to believe in. It is the God behind the promise.”
God is not asking us to believe in the promise itself, but to believe in the power of the God who promised it and will bring it to fruition.
Christmas is a time of miracles. One of the greatest miracle of all time was the birth of Jesus Christ so many years ago, followed by His ressurection years later. In a way, miracles are God’s fulfillment of a promise made. He made a promise to Mary that she would bear a son and his name would be called Jesus, and this son would be the incarnation of God come to earth as a human. When Mary asked, “How will this be?”, the angel replied saying, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” God promised an impossible thing to take place within Mary, conceiving a son while still a virgin, and when she asked how, the answer was through the power of the Most High God. He wasn’t asking Mary to believe in the promise itself, but to believe in the power of the God behind the promise to fulfill what He said would happen.
All throughout Scripture, we see a thread of promises that are woven together to form the stories we have come to know and love in the Bible. When stitched together, these promises fulfilled reveal a picture of our great and glorious God. They reveal His character and show that He genuinely cares for His children and longs to bless them and fill them with His goodness and love. He promised children to the barren wombs and that those children would be great or great things would come from them. He promised to deliver Israel from the hands of the Egyptians and into the Promised Land. He promised to protect His people from death and destruction and famine. He promised to take care of His children and always be a shelter and a rock to those who sought to give Him their hearts and lives. He promised that a Savior would come to earth and pay the debt of our sins so that we could be restored to Him. God fulfilled every one of His promises. It may not have been in the timing that people were wanting or expecting, but, He ALWAYS fulfilled His promises, and we can rest in the fact that no matter how long-expected the promise, if God made a promise, He will fulfill it.
God may not send angels to deliver a personal message from Him anymore. He may not appear to you in a burning bush or the quiet stillness after the wind and fire. He may not speak through an animal or send a prophet to your doorstep to declare His promises over you. But, even if He is not speaking to His children the same way He used to, He still makes promises to us. His promises of old still apply to our lives today. Promises to love us and cherish us. Promises to care for us and protect us. Promises to be our defender and our strength. Promises to watch over us and hear us when we call to Him. Promises to always be with us and never leave or forsake us. Promises to deliver. Promises for peace and abundant life in Him. He loves to promise us things and do whatever He can to show us that He loves us and shower us with the gifts of His goodness and love. That doesn’t mean that life will always be easy. In fact, He also promises hardship and difficult times for those who believe in Him. But those things are never sent with the intention of hurting us, but rather, to grow us or make us more dependent on Him and show the power of His glory through our circumstances.
In all these things that God promises us, He makes it very clear that these promises are not dependent on us. That’s why when He made His covenant with Abraham, He caused him to fall into a deep sleep and was the only one to walk between the halved animals. To show that the fulfillment of that promise was solely dependent on God and that He would fulfill it no matter what. The same is true for every other promise made in the Bible. His promise to build a great nation from Abraham was not dependent on anything Abraham did. Sarah became so worried about the promise being fulfilled she gave her maid-servant to Abraham to bear him children. But, despite Sarah’s failed effort to take the promise into her own hands and try to make it happen in her own way and time, God eventually opened up her long-barren womb and blessed her with a child, even when it seemed completely impossible and long past the time of possibility. God delivered His people from the Egyptians, even when they were completely hemmed in between a rock and a hard place, Egyptians behind and a vast body of water before them. God promised a baby boy would be born to a virgin and that baby would become the Savior of the world. He also promised that the baby born to her would someday be crucified and raised from the dead 3 days later. All completely impossible things within man’s conception and means, but with God, all things are possible.
I don’t know if God has promised anything to you, whispered assurances of His goodness and love, or a more specific promise about a loved one or specific situation in your life. Maybe you feel God has been too long silent or you’ve started to doubt something promised to you long ago. It is hard to keep believing something will happen or change when the answer has been silence or “no” for so long. I know. There have been many things in my life I stopped believing in or hoping for because the answers have always been “no” or have been “wait” for a long, long time. Just remember this Christmas as we celebrate the long-awaited birth of our Christ and Savior, that God is always faithful, and God always fulfills His promises. Whatever promises He’s placed in your heart, He will fulfill. He is not asking us to believe in the promise itself but rather the God behind the promise. Even it seems impossible, you can rest in the fact that God is the God of the impossible, and if it is His will, nothing can stop it from happening. Not Satan or any of his dark forces. Not man, or anything else on this earth.
I pray you find peace this Christmas season as you rest in the promises of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God. A God who has been fulfilling His promises since the beginning of time and loves you so, so much that He sent His only Son to this earth in the form of a baby to live on earth as a man and one day die for our sins and be raised up from the dead so we could be reunited with God. Trust in the promises that have been fulfilled in your life and let those promises fulfilled remind you that God still cares, God still sees, God still knows, and God still hears. Believe in the goodness of His heart and love for you. Rest in the God who was, who is, and is to come. Hope can be found in the God of promises.
“The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over with loud singing.” Zephaniah 3:17
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