Some Examples Of Bible Promises:
1. When you have a tough decision.
- James 1:5.
2. When you’re facing a financial need.
- Matthew 6:33.
3. When you don’t sense God’s presence.
- Hebrews 13:5.
4. When you’re feeling overwhelmed.
- Jeremiah 29:11.
Things To Remember When You’re Claiming A Bible Promise:
1. You can’t use your sword if you don’t know it’s there.
- Ephesians 6:17.
- We leave so much on the table when we don’t know that the Bible actually promises us.
- This is one reason that we need to be in the Word. Even if you don’t have the whole thing memorized, you still can get familiar enough with it that you know enough to know where to look it up. You need to know what’s available to you.
- In Ephesians 6, Paul writes about the armor of the Lord. Most of what’s been given to us are defensive things. The one offensive weapon is the sword of the Lord – the Word of God.
- Can you imagine a soldier going into battle without his weapon? He would no longer be thinking about victory in that battle, but instead simply survival. God wants more for us than mere survival. He wants us to win victories for the Kingdom of God.
- For those victories to happen, we have to know how to use our sword.
- When you’re faced with discouragement, do you have any idea what promises the Bible gives you to deal with that? Worry? Job loss? Feelings of worthlessness? Uncertainty about the point of life? How to see God move through your life?
- The answers to all those questions is in the Word. You have to be in the Word regularly if you’re going to win battles for the Lord.
2. Pay attention to the conditions.
- Matthew 6:33.
- It’s essential to always read the Bible in context. What does that mean? It means that you have to understand what the larger passage is saying and read the words in the proper context of what’s being said.
- You can pull words from the Bible out of context and make them say things that were not originally promised. The danger with that is that God is under no obligation to fulfill a promise that He never made.
- For instance, Matthew 6:33.
- This is, as we talked about earlier, a wonderful promise concerning financial supply. It’s a verse that I come back to frequently.
- But to get to the second half of the verse (the promise part), you have to understand the first half of the verse (the condition part). The promise is that God will take care of our financial needs. The condition is “Seek first the Kingdom of God and its righteousness.” In other words, this promise is only available to those who are putting God first in their lives. Not just anyone can claim that verse.
- A second example is Romans 8:28.
- It says, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.”
- It would be easy to say that the Bible promises that in everything God works for our good, but that’s not exactly what it says. It says in all things God is working for the good of those who love Him. That means the promise really only applies to those who are following Christ, or as the verse puts it “who have been called according to His purpose.”
- Not just anyone can claim that promise.
- A third example is 1 John 1:7.
- “But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from all sin.”
- A fourth example is Matthew 11:28.
- “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
- Another problem that happens, since we’re talking about this, is that there are also folks who claim promises that are not found in the Bible at all.
- The biggest of these is probably physical healing.
- There are obviously times when God does intercede and miraculously heals someone, but we do not have a Biblical promise that we can claim that guarantees physical healing. It’s just not in there.
- Despite that, many people will say they “just know” that God is going to bring healing. That’s a dangerous thing to say, especially around non-Christians or immature baby Christians. The reason it’s dangerous is that when the answer doesn’t come (as it often does not, since God doesn’t always bring healing), those people presume that God didn’t fulfill His promise. They aren’t mature enough to realize that the person was claiming a promise that God never made.
- I remember a situation where a dynamic Christian mentor to the local high school’s sports teams was diagnosed with cancer. He stated that God was going to heal him. He died. While his overall impact was tremendously positive for Christ, he did some damage there at the end with his “guaranteed answer” that God had not given.
- It’s a wonderful thing to have confidence in God, but we need to be careful that it doesn’t cause us to put words in God’s mouth.
- There are people who used to walk with God who have grown discouraged and who have quit walking with God because God didn’t fulfill a promise. In fact, they were claiming a promise that God either didn’t make at all or they paid no attention to the condition attached to it.
- When you’re facing a serious problem in your life and you’re really counting on God to come through for you, it can be devastating to have the cavalry never show up. We want to make sure we only claim promises that God actually made.
3. Faith demands patience.
- 2 Peter 3:8-9.
- When we talk about these promises, it’s worth noting that God is not like FedEx. He doesn’t always deliver what we want the same day.
- I do want us to have confidence in God’s faithfulness to fulfill His promises, but He is not always as quick to fulfill them as we might like. He operates on His own schedule.
- 2 Peter 3:8 reminds us that with the Lord a day is as a thousand years, and vice versa. What’s that mean? It means that God’s not in hurry – He’s got the schedule all sorted out and isn’t worried about running behind.
- 2 Peter 3:9 tells us that God is not slow in fulfilling His promises, as some consider slowness. We could probably include ourselves among the “some” in mind there. We want it now! We’re tired of waiting! When’s He going to show up?! He will show up at the right time, with the right answer, but it’s probably won’t be the same as when we’d like Him to be there.
- There is a troubling pattern in the Scripture: God never seems to fulfill His promises as quickly as His servants would like for Him to.
- Abraham and Sarah wait all those years on a son.
- In fact, if you read through the book of Genesis as a whole, the line of Christ is a case study in infertility.
- You move to the second book of the Bible and we’re into Israel being stuck in Egypt for 400 years before God sends Moses to bring them out.
- Throughout the rest of the Old Testament, you have captivities where Israel is taken off into other lands for extended periods of time.
- And then there’s another 400-year gap between the last Old Testament prophet and the arrival of the Christ.
- It’s a disturbing pattern: God is not in a hurry. He is good for His promises, but He’s not in a hurry.
- And so faith demands patience.
- It’s not just enough to have confidence in God. That’s essential – we want to stand firm in our belief in what God can do.
- But we have to have an enduring confidence. Confidence that endures the days, weeks, months, and years that we sometimes have to wait before God provides the answer.
- To be honest, the endurance part is harder than the confidence part. We can pep-talk ourselves up to get pumped about how solid God’s reputation is for answering prayer. But that short-term emotional high isn’t enough to endure the desert of waiting.
- We have to have that quieter, less exciting ability to endure with confidence. It simply rests in who God is and our certainty that He’s going to come through.
4. God has a 100% promise-fulfillment rate.
- 2 Corinthians 1:20; Hebrews 10:23.
- When we have a promise and it lines up with everything that we’ve talked about today, we need to know that God has a 100% promise-fulfillment rate.
- There are psychics who claim to be able to know the future, yet when you study their actual predictions they are well below the 100% rate that you’d expect from someone claiming knowledge of the future.
- I heard once that they went back and surveyed the predictions of a well-known psychic and her accuracy rate was 6%. You could do better than that just randomly making stuff up!
- Hebrews 10:23 reminds us that the one who has promised is faithful.
- God is faithful. He is good for His promises.
- We’ve all been burned by people we trusted who didn’t come through with what they said they’d do. It could have been something as small as a homework assignment in school or a work project. It could have been something as big as a marriage. Having felt the sting of that broken trust is enough to make us hesitant. But God is different – He is always faithful.
- 2 Corinthians 1:20 is a great confidence booster: it boldly states that all of God’s promises are “yes” in Christ. What’s that mean? It means that Christ is the ultimate fulfillment of what God is up to in the world and so it represents the high point of God’s work. Because we are saved through Christ’s work, we are in the awesome position of being able to receive the benefits of all the promises that God has made.
- The second half of that verse notes that the answers to the promises bring an “amen” from us that brings glory to God.
