A promise is meant to be a huge thing. It's usually just a verbal commitment between two people. Very seldom are everyday promises put in writing and signed by each person. So the only thing that keeps a person from breaking a promise is themselves. How many times have I broken a promise? I can assure you, I have broken a lot more promises than I care to admit. Promises to do something for someone, promises to not do something, promises to return an item previously borrowed, the list goes on and on. It would be hard for someone to keep faith in my promises after I had broken more than one. Today I read about multiple promises. In my journey to discover more about God and His love for us, I went back to where everything began. I started reading back in Genesis and I must admit, my mind was blown. I've read Genesis multiple times. I've done several studies about the different people in Genesis and their faith and trust in God. But until today, I had never really understood something that seems to be so embedded in this particular book-God's promises. Chapter after chapter God was showing me that He honors His word and that He always keeps His promises. And He does this to show how much He truly loves us.
One of the first promises God gives is after Adam and Eve have sinned and have both eaten of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This promise is so uplifting and encouraging to me. You would figure that after finding out that His own creation had done the ONE thing He had told them not to do, God would be so disheartened and disgusted with mankind that He would just forget about the whole thing right then. But He didn't. Adam and Eve were separated from God because of their sin, but God gives us a promise here. In chapter 3 verse 15 God tells the serpent, Satan's tool of temptation to Eve, "I will make you and the woman enemies to each other. Your descendants and her descendants will be enemies. One of her descendants will crush your head, and you will bite his heel." One of her descendants. Here God gives us the promise of Christ, of our Savior and Redeemer, to come and destroy Satan. That first promise just blew my mind because I'm thinking man we don't deserve a promise like that. God gave us something perfect and we messed it up. But God simply nudges and tells me "Hey, yeah you messed up, and you still mess up, but I still love you. Hence the promise." It gave me goosebumps.
Then God continues showing His love for man through the story of Noah. Man had just fallen so far into sin and corruption that it pained God to think about what He had created. At this point, I think I would probably have given up if I was God. I mean He's already given man a second chance after eating the fruit and we go and fall even more into sin. But He doesn't give up. He found good in one man. One man. Noah. God was going to destroy every living thing because it was so sinful, but He decided to spare one man and his family. So God floods the earth but spares Noah and his family on the ark. There were a few things that stuck out to me after the flood. In the first verse of chapter 8, it says "God remembered Noah". God remembered him. It would have been easy for God to change His mind and leave Noah and his family and all of those animals on the boat. No one had to remind God about Noah, He remembered Noah and that He had promised to keep him safe, (chp 6 vs. 18). So God remembered His agreement with Noah and stopped the flood and allowed the waters to recede, but then He continued to make a new promise to Noah and the rest of mankind. In chapter 9 vs 9, God begins telling Noah of the new promise He is making-that He will never again destroy the earth by flood. But my favorite two verses come in chapter 8 vs 21 and also chapter 9 vs 16. Verse 21 says "Their thoughts are evil even when they are young, BUT I will never again destroy every living thing on the earth as I did this time." Verse 16 says, "When the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and I will remember the agreement that continues FOREVER between me and every living thing on the earth." WOW. God promises that even though we are sinful from an early age, He will never, NEVER destroy the earth and all of us like He did before. An amazing example of His unfailing love for us because He says this promise lasts FOREVER. Wow.
The last promise I want to mention in this post is the promise that God made to Abram. If you jump over to chapter 15 verse 1, God tells Abram, "Abram, don't be afraid, I will defend you , and I will give you a great reward." Here God promises to defend and bless Abram and He did. If you keep reading through the story of Abram (later Abraham) God continued to stay with him. God also promised to give Abram a son. That had to be a huge promise because Abram was already over 90 years old and God is promising to make his descendants like the stars and the dust on the earth-impossible to count. But God does promise this in verse 5 and as we read in His word, He later fulfills this promise despite Abram and Sarai's attempts to fulfill the promise themselves. "Then God led Abram outside and said, 'Look at the sky. There are so many stars you cannot count them. Your descendants also will be too many to count.'" And Abram believed Him. Go on to verse 6 and it says "Abram believed the Lord. And the Lord accepted Abram's faith, and that faith made him right with God." God promised Abram that his descendants would be impossible to count even though it seemed at the time like it was not going to happen. God makes promises like that. It sometimes seems like God is making a promise that to us is just impossible, but as I'm learning everyday, God likes to do the impossible.
I know it's been a long post, but I was just blown away today when I started reading. God shows us over and over and over again how much He loves us by fulfilling His promises to us. Those are just a few of His amazing promises. There are plenty more that fill the pages of His word. God promises to protect us, encourage us, love us, guide us, bless us, teach us, and on and on and on. After reading these few promises and seeing how God continually stayed true to them, I see the phrase "I promise" a little more differently. They aren't just empty words, but words spoken out of love for someone. Just another stepping stone in my walk with Him.
Impossible
|
Soooo...I really just wanted to spend some time and update you guys on what God is doing in my youth group and my life! And believe me is He doing some amazing things!
I started off my summer with a youth group full of guys and I was a wee bit, okay really majorly, freaked out! But boy has it been fun getting to know these guys and just all about their lives here in the middle of nowhere South Georgia. I have definitely learned a lot, and while they haven't successfully taught me how to skateboard, God has been teaching me great things through them. I must admit I was a little disappointed when I hadn't seen any girls about two weeks in. My thinking was that I would come in and be this awesome college girl that was helping for the summer and all of the girls that used to come to the church would be running back and want to do things with the youth group again. WRONG. Like I said, two weeks into my summer and I still hadn't seen but the three or four boys that consistently came. I was getting discouraged and couldn't understand why things weren't happening, but then God spoke through a guest preacher that we had at the church. He preached on doing the IMPOSSIBLE for God. The first step of doing that is surrendering, completely, whole-heartedly, totally, without a doubt, entirely to doing what God's called you regardless of whether or not you think it's possible. It was what I needed to hear and I felt like he was talking directly to me. A week after I began praying for God to do the impossible in this youth group, girls started showing up. It was amazing and it was all God. Now the girls are coming pretty regularly and I've gotten the chance to share my testimony with them and to spend a little time getting to know them better as well. And I don't think that bringing girls into the youth group was all that God has planned for the summer so I'm excited to see how things develop as we continue to do more activities with the youth.
The church does a lot of work with some of the rehab facilities in the area. The town I'm in is running rampant with drug and alcohol addiction. The statistics are just astounding and heartbreaking. A lot of the youth in my youth group are affected by it and most of the people in the church were not raised in church but rather started as new believers after overcoming certain addictions. Each Thursday night, the church does a program called Celebrate Recovery. It's a wonderful program for anyone who has hurts, habits, or hang-ups. The worship is amazing but the chance to serve others who aren't served that often is what warms my heart. Since I've been attending, there has been one lady who has made a profession of faith during this program!!!!! I can not put enough exclamation marks at the end of that sentence. The excitement that night was unbelievable!!!!!! There was a girl from the same facility who came to church with her a few Sundays later who also accepted Christ!!!!!!! (again not enough exclamation marks)
The next set of amazing events occurred during VBS. We had around 40 kids a night and for this tiny town of only 600, I feel like that's a pretty big deal. We had several more youth come in just to help out with VBS. A lot of times they got stuck with me in games which gave me a chance to get to know them and let them know about all of the amazing things God was doing already and all of the fun activities we had planned for the rest of the summer. But beyond having a wonderful turn out and a chance to meet new youth, we had three boys give their lives to Christ!!!!!!!! (exclamation marks) Four of the five people who have come to know Jesus will be baptized this coming Sunday!!!!!!!!!!
God is truly doing some amazing things this summer, not only in the youth group that I am working with but with the church as a whole. I have truly been blessed to be a part of this church that is just pouring out Christ's love daily to the people who need it the most. I am unbelievably excited to see what God has in store for the next few weeks! I know there is still a lot of IMPOSSIBLE to be done!
I started off my summer with a youth group full of guys and I was a wee bit, okay really majorly, freaked out! But boy has it been fun getting to know these guys and just all about their lives here in the middle of nowhere South Georgia. I have definitely learned a lot, and while they haven't successfully taught me how to skateboard, God has been teaching me great things through them. I must admit I was a little disappointed when I hadn't seen any girls about two weeks in. My thinking was that I would come in and be this awesome college girl that was helping for the summer and all of the girls that used to come to the church would be running back and want to do things with the youth group again. WRONG. Like I said, two weeks into my summer and I still hadn't seen but the three or four boys that consistently came. I was getting discouraged and couldn't understand why things weren't happening, but then God spoke through a guest preacher that we had at the church. He preached on doing the IMPOSSIBLE for God. The first step of doing that is surrendering, completely, whole-heartedly, totally, without a doubt, entirely to doing what God's called you regardless of whether or not you think it's possible. It was what I needed to hear and I felt like he was talking directly to me. A week after I began praying for God to do the impossible in this youth group, girls started showing up. It was amazing and it was all God. Now the girls are coming pretty regularly and I've gotten the chance to share my testimony with them and to spend a little time getting to know them better as well. And I don't think that bringing girls into the youth group was all that God has planned for the summer so I'm excited to see how things develop as we continue to do more activities with the youth.
The church does a lot of work with some of the rehab facilities in the area. The town I'm in is running rampant with drug and alcohol addiction. The statistics are just astounding and heartbreaking. A lot of the youth in my youth group are affected by it and most of the people in the church were not raised in church but rather started as new believers after overcoming certain addictions. Each Thursday night, the church does a program called Celebrate Recovery. It's a wonderful program for anyone who has hurts, habits, or hang-ups. The worship is amazing but the chance to serve others who aren't served that often is what warms my heart. Since I've been attending, there has been one lady who has made a profession of faith during this program!!!!! I can not put enough exclamation marks at the end of that sentence. The excitement that night was unbelievable!!!!!! There was a girl from the same facility who came to church with her a few Sundays later who also accepted Christ!!!!!!! (again not enough exclamation marks)
The next set of amazing events occurred during VBS. We had around 40 kids a night and for this tiny town of only 600, I feel like that's a pretty big deal. We had several more youth come in just to help out with VBS. A lot of times they got stuck with me in games which gave me a chance to get to know them and let them know about all of the amazing things God was doing already and all of the fun activities we had planned for the rest of the summer. But beyond having a wonderful turn out and a chance to meet new youth, we had three boys give their lives to Christ!!!!!!!! (exclamation marks) Four of the five people who have come to know Jesus will be baptized this coming Sunday!!!!!!!!!!
God is truly doing some amazing things this summer, not only in the youth group that I am working with but with the church as a whole. I have truly been blessed to be a part of this church that is just pouring out Christ's love daily to the people who need it the most. I am unbelievably excited to see what God has in store for the next few weeks! I know there is still a lot of IMPOSSIBLE to be done!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
