The Bible is full of promises. A
great exercise is to go through and keep a journal of all the promises from God
in Scripture that you can find and see how this promise is impacting your life.
There are several God-promises found in the Old Testament book of Jeremiah.
Jeremiah lived around the years
627–587 B.C. about 600 years before Jesus walked this earth. Jeremiah was not
just a bullfrog, he was a prophet of God, speaking to the people what God told
him to tell them. He began this ministry at a really tough time in the Israel’s
history, when things were going good. Now, you probably think that being a
prophet in good times would be easier than being a prophet in bad times, but
that wasn’t the case. Jeremiah had to go to out to the people, who were
enjoying a time of peace and prosperity; they had jobs and food and the future
was looking good. Jeremiah got to tell them, this is all gonna end because you
need to change. But nobody wanted to hear this from Jeremiah. He kept saying
things like, “Repent, and turn back to God”, and this was irritating to most
people because they thought things were going pretty well, yet Jeremiah kept
saying the good times were gonna end. And they did. Nebuchadnezzar, the king of
the Babylonian empire took over Jerusalem in 597BC, and then Judah (the
southern kingdom) over the next ten years, then he took a bunch of the people
into exile in Babylon.
Even in the midst of having to be
the constant bearer of bad news, Jeremiah still had a heart of compassion for
the people and a trust that God had plans for them, a good plan for them. He
believed God’s promise that there would eventually come a day of restoration,
when their suffering would come to an end, and God would prosper them and give
them a future with hope (see Jeremiah 29:11).
“The time is coming, declares the Lord”, (Jeremiah 31:31)…that’s the
Promise! One day….
One day, the Lord says, the house
of Israel and the house of Judah will be restored.
One day, you will be able to return
to the land that the Lord gave to you.
One day, your homes and businesses
will be rebuilt.
One day, you will have work again.
One day, your divorce will be a
thing of the past.
One day, shame will no longer
control your life.
One day, your grief will become
manageable, and you will smile and laugh again.
One day, you will no longer be a
slave to your addiction.
One day, there will be a new
covenant.
One day, the sins of the past will
all be forgotten and you will be given a fresh start. The slate will be wiped
completely clean.
One day, Christ will come in final
victory and we will feast at his heavenly banquet.
The Lord is saying to them, and to
us, “No matter what you are going through, no matter how much it hurts or how
difficult it is to imagine a future with hope, I promise you, One Day it will
get better. And in the meantime you are not alone. I am with you always.”
Words of hope, words of comfort,
words of promise.
This is grace. The grace of God
shown in Jesus Christ speaks straight into our hearts. Just as God touched the
people of Israel and Judah straight to the heart just when they needed it the
most, so God can touch us just when we need it most. And we simply must ask.
And that is His Promise.
Maybe promises are hard for you.
Maybe you’ve been lied to and had so many promises broken that you don’t want
to hear somebody say “I promise”. Or maybe you have such a hard time keeping
your word that you don’t want to make a promise because you know what will
happen.
But
look at Jeremiah 31:34b, God says, “I
will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more”.
What a Promise!
Our God is a not a Promise-Breaker,
He is a Promise-Keeper. He will fulfill and be faithful to the promises that He
has made to you.
Today if you need to reclaim one of
those promises, or if you need to renew a promise that you have broken, either
to God to someone else, today is the day to do it. I PROMISE that it’s the
right thing to do.
