I am sure we have all experienced times when someone has made us a promise only to go back on their word. It sure is hard to ever trust them again!
I am so grateful that we serve a God who keeps His promises. Numbers 23:19 NLT reads "God is not a man, so He does not lie. He is not human, so He does not change His mind. Has He ever spoken and failed to act? Has He ever promised and not carried it through?" My head believed that but it was something God had to settle once and for all in my heart.
It wasn't that I thought God was a liar ... I absolutely trusted Him to provide for me (Phil 4:19 'And my God will supply every need of yours according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.') However my actions often showed that I wasn't fully convinced that God would look after me emotionally. (2 Thess 3:3 ESV 'But the Lord is faithful. He will establish you and guard you against the evil one.') I felt like I had taken quite a beating from the devil when I was a new Christian and it had caused me to take back some control. As I journeyed through life, I would continually come back to a point of realizing I didn't fully trust God because "I was a baby Christian and You didn't look after me". I then transferred this to my children ... 'If You didn't look after me Lord, how can I trust you to look after my children?' My worst fears were realized when they hit their teenage years and began to fall away from God.
By March 2011 my major concern was for my son Zach. One heartbreak too many had caused him to spiral into depression in Year 12 of High School. He stopped coming to church and for many years he had been self-medicating with drugs and alcohol. He was now 24 and I had serious concerns for his mental health.
One morning as I prayed for him and wept before the Lord, He reminded me that two years earlier my friend Miriam had been praying for Zach and the Lord had said I was to 'Have faith to believe every promise God has given you for Zach will come to pass.' I saw a picture in my mind of an open book that held all those promises.
I am so grateful that we serve a God who keeps His promises. Numbers 23:19 NLT reads "God is not a man, so He does not lie. He is not human, so He does not change His mind. Has He ever spoken and failed to act? Has He ever promised and not carried it through?" My head believed that but it was something God had to settle once and for all in my heart.
It wasn't that I thought God was a liar ... I absolutely trusted Him to provide for me (Phil 4:19 'And my God will supply every need of yours according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.') However my actions often showed that I wasn't fully convinced that God would look after me emotionally. (2 Thess 3:3 ESV 'But the Lord is faithful. He will establish you and guard you against the evil one.') I felt like I had taken quite a beating from the devil when I was a new Christian and it had caused me to take back some control. As I journeyed through life, I would continually come back to a point of realizing I didn't fully trust God because "I was a baby Christian and You didn't look after me". I then transferred this to my children ... 'If You didn't look after me Lord, how can I trust you to look after my children?' My worst fears were realized when they hit their teenage years and began to fall away from God.
By March 2011 my major concern was for my son Zach. One heartbreak too many had caused him to spiral into depression in Year 12 of High School. He stopped coming to church and for many years he had been self-medicating with drugs and alcohol. He was now 24 and I had serious concerns for his mental health.
One morning as I prayed for him and wept before the Lord, He reminded me that two years earlier my friend Miriam had been praying for Zach and the Lord had said I was to 'Have faith to believe every promise God has given you for Zach will come to pass.' I saw a picture in my mind of an open book that held all those promises.
I spent three hours going through old journals looking for promises, writing them out and adding the happiest photo of Zach I could find. (He was not a happy young man at the time!) The Lord was teaching me principles about prayer.
Knowing Zach's promises gave me hope and courage to believe for breakthrough. God taught me to insert Zach's name into the promises and pray them out loud. Is 62 'Because I love Zach, I will not keep still. Because my heart yearns for Zach, I cannot remain silent. I will not stop praying for him until his righteousness shines like the dawn, and his salvation blazes like a burning torch.' And verse 7: 'Give the Lord no rest until He completes His work.'
Declaring the promise is agreeing with what God has said and speaking it out. As I declared Zach's promises, it changed me ... I learnt what "Faith is the substance of things hoped for" actually meant. The promises became real in my heart ... more real than the circumstances I was seeing with my natural eyes. I learnt it wasn't about the 'level' of my faith but the faithfulness of the One that gave the promise.
God taught me the importance of living the promise ... to live as though it's true even though the circumstances defy it. Blessings (God's promises) and curses (criticisms/put downs/negativity) should not come out of the same mouth. (James 3:10). I was careful whenever I spoke to or about Zach to tell the truth but speak by faith. (ie Well, he's living in the belly of a whale right now but I am confident God will spit him out right where he's meant to be' and He did!!)
Finally, I learnt that God is always busy protecting His promises. He brings about events and situations moving us like chess pieces towards our destiny. And that's just what happened with Zach ... after 6 months of claiming God's promises for his life, the first changes happened when he accepted the Lord. He literally changed overnight from an angry, hateful young man to one willing to forgive. He called my husband 'Dad' for the first time in 7 years and cooked him breakfast for Fathers Day. His journey is on-going with plenty of ups and down, but after each 'down' he comes up better than before. I love who he is becoming!
God took me back to a place where I needed to trust him (just like I did when I fell pregnant with Zach as an unmarried new Christian) in order to settle my trust issues once and for all. I now teach other women the lessons the Lord taught me during that period of time in my "Promises Workshops". Last weekend I had the pleasure of teaching this workshop to five ladies from the Grace Christian Church at Redbank Plains.
Knowing Zach's promises gave me hope and courage to believe for breakthrough. God taught me to insert Zach's name into the promises and pray them out loud. Is 62 'Because I love Zach, I will not keep still. Because my heart yearns for Zach, I cannot remain silent. I will not stop praying for him until his righteousness shines like the dawn, and his salvation blazes like a burning torch.' And verse 7: 'Give the Lord no rest until He completes His work.'
Declaring the promise is agreeing with what God has said and speaking it out. As I declared Zach's promises, it changed me ... I learnt what "Faith is the substance of things hoped for" actually meant. The promises became real in my heart ... more real than the circumstances I was seeing with my natural eyes. I learnt it wasn't about the 'level' of my faith but the faithfulness of the One that gave the promise.
God taught me the importance of living the promise ... to live as though it's true even though the circumstances defy it. Blessings (God's promises) and curses (criticisms/put downs/negativity) should not come out of the same mouth. (James 3:10). I was careful whenever I spoke to or about Zach to tell the truth but speak by faith. (ie Well, he's living in the belly of a whale right now but I am confident God will spit him out right where he's meant to be' and He did!!)
Finally, I learnt that God is always busy protecting His promises. He brings about events and situations moving us like chess pieces towards our destiny. And that's just what happened with Zach ... after 6 months of claiming God's promises for his life, the first changes happened when he accepted the Lord. He literally changed overnight from an angry, hateful young man to one willing to forgive. He called my husband 'Dad' for the first time in 7 years and cooked him breakfast for Fathers Day. His journey is on-going with plenty of ups and down, but after each 'down' he comes up better than before. I love who he is becoming!
God took me back to a place where I needed to trust him (just like I did when I fell pregnant with Zach as an unmarried new Christian) in order to settle my trust issues once and for all. I now teach other women the lessons the Lord taught me during that period of time in my "Promises Workshops". Last weekend I had the pleasure of teaching this workshop to five ladies from the Grace Christian Church at Redbank Plains.
I helped them decorate the cover of their Pocket Album then we discussed what they could put inside. They were very proud of their handiwork!