Season 1, Episode 6: Intro to God's Promises

Intro to God’s Promises

Let me paint you a picture. You find yourself on a boat. It's old, rustic looking worn, and all wooden. You look around at the interior of the room you're in, there's a long wooden bench on one side with a blanket on it. It goes along the whole length of the room, and at one end, on the far side, there's a man sleeping on the opposite side in the center of the room.

You see stairs, you walk over to them. You go up the deck and you see several men manning the boat. You hear grumblings about something, but you can't make out what. You look in the distance and you see some nasty clouds. Slowly, the boat begins to sway more and more from one side to the other. The grumblings turn into a scramble.

The clouds get right overhead. There's thunder, lightning, the wind is powerful. You wonder what in the world is going to happen. Are you watching the start of a shipwreck? The men start throwing things overboard to lighten the ship. The boat is tilting at these terrible angles and it's taking on tons of water.

Yet you hear that the man in the ship is still sleeping. How could he, through all of this, how was he still sleeping? The commotion, the things being thrown overboard, the water coming in, how was he still sleeping? They go down those same stairs that you went up and they go and they grab the man and they say, "get up! There's a terrible storm. Wake up."

He gets up and he wipes his eyes. He looks at him. He says, "You of little faith, why are you so afraid?" That man that was sleeping there was the God who had created the storm, the God who had created the same waters that they floated on. These men had sat there dealing with this storm, throwing things overboard, panicking, trying to do anything to save the ship. And saved their own lives in the process, but they had forgotten who was on the boat with them. They had forgotten how powerful he was. They had forgotten with just the sound of his voice he could calm the winds and the waves of that very storm. That's exactly what happened As he walked up those stairs, looked out at the winds and the waves, and calmly said, "peace be still." They had forgotten who was on the boat with them. 

Even though we're Christians, even though we believe in God and we believe in his power, we sometimes we do. We get anxious, worried, and afraid. And it's because we've forgotten that Jesus has promised to be in the storm with us and throughout scripture he has given us powerful promises to stand on. It's said that there's over 700 promises in the Bible, and I believe that those promises were given to us to help us stand when the storms come. So today we're gonna talk about those promises and how to use them.

What is a Promise of God?

This last third. Of this season, we're switching gears and talking about the promises of God. As I've thought about it, I don't think I've ever heard a pastor preach about the promises of God. They've vaguely talked about some of them and mentioned that we should claim the promises of God, but I don't know that I've ever heard a pastor just plainly lay out what a promise of God is and how it can apply to my life. I've gotten to listen to some really incredible pastors that's not to knock them. This is just not something we've talked about a whole lot in the church, and so I'm gonna talk about it now. 

So, to start out, what is a promise of God? And just to explain a promise of God is not just the good stuff that we usually think about. Versus like in Jeremiah where it says, "I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and give you a future." Like I mentioned in the intro, there's over 700 promises throughout the Bible, and some of them are good and some of them are not so good. There are negative promises from God and a lot of times you'll find those, especially in the Old Testament where God says, if you turn away from me, you, this terrible thing will happen.

And so you have both sides of this. You have good promises where God says, if you do this, I'll do this good thing. And then negative promises where if you do this bad thing, I will do this bad thing in return. And either one is a promise and a promise is a statement in the Bible that God will do something or God will make something happen. And sometimes it's just God saying that he will do something on our behalf. It's as simple as that. Some, like I said, some are good, some are bad, but all are true and will happen. Max Lucado says, "All are binding for not only is God a promise maker, God is a promise keeper."

Unlike people that so often and so easily break promises and they're hard to trust, the promises of God are permanent and unbreakable. As 2 Peter 1:4 says, "They are very great and precious promises." The question is, what do we do with these promises? 

How to Use the Promises

And there are two incredible authors that wrote books on God's promises and how to use them. And I'm gonna talk about each of their different main ideas, because I think they're a little bit different, but very important, and each is powerful in its own way.

But I want you to think for just a second about what a promise really is. Because sometimes we overspiritualize ideas. And I want you to think what it would mean if somebody who you really trusted gave you a promise. Maybe you had a family member, a parent, a grandparent that came to you, just as an example, that they came to you a couple of years ago and said, "If you ever run into money problems, you ever need money, you come to me. You come and talk to me. If you ever find yourself in a bind, You come talk to me. Don't go to a bank, don't go to anybody else. I promise I will be there and I will help you." You have this peace going on in your life because you know that if a financial situation came up, you have them to fall back on.

Let's say something did happen and you needed money, you wouldn't stress, you wouldn't worry. Obviously, you don't really want to go to that person, so it's a little bit different. It's not a perfect example. But, let's say you did need the money at some point, and you go to that person and you say, "Hey, you said a couple years ago, if I ever needed help, I could come to you and I need help." And they gave you the money that helps you out, but you trusted that they would fulfill their end of the promise. And this isn't a perfect example because honestly, we get worried going to other people and asking for things. It's kind of embarrassing. And that's not how we should feel in the promises of God.

God has given us these promises and said, come to me when you need me, but just as an example, whenever somebody you trust makes you a promise, you believe 100% that you can go to them and that's how we should feel with God. So I wanna share with you what these two authors said. 

The first one is Mark Batterson in his book, The Circle Maker. He says, and I quote, "Jericho is spelled different ways." Throughout his book, he uses Jericho as a metaphor for the problems that we face, but what does that really mean? Jericho, in the Old Testament was the city had the largest walls in the area. It was incredibly fortified and most believed that the city was completely impenetrable.

But God told the Israelites, To circle the city one time each day for six days and go around seven times on the seventh day. When the people had done all of this, on that last trip around, they would blast their trumpets, they would make a loud noise in this last time around, and God had promised that the impossible walls would crumble at their feet. These walls that everybody said were impenetrable would crumble at their feet. They literally had to circle the promise. Joshua, the leader of the Israelites, had to look crazy. Yet God had given them a promise. He said, I will bring down these walls. And so every day they walked around that city and they said, God, you promised us these walls are gonna fall. They stood firm on that promise. Every single day they held up their side of the deal. And finally, on that last day, just like God said, they made this loud noise and the walls of the city came crumbling down. They had stood on the promise. They believed it. They trusted in God that he would deliver, and He did the impossible made possible in their lives.

So what does that mean for us? I believe it really boils down to four steps: find a problem, search scripture, circle promises, and pray them. Finding a problem is not very difficult. It comes up naturally in life. You wait long enough, a problem will come up In a real life situation, let's say that you have an impossible seeming problem. A family member gets a bad report from the doctor and it doesn't look good. That problem becomes your Jericho. You take that problem and you begin to pray and look through scripture for a promise that you can stand on. Not only a promise you can stand on, but something that you can believe and something that you can hope for. You come across the verse in Isaiah 53:5 that says, "by his stripes, we are healed." You physically circle that promise in your Bible and you begin to pray, "God, Jesus has already paid the price for this healing. I'm standing and believing the promise that you are going to handle this regardless of the doctor's reports. I know that you can work a miracle." And that's Mark Batterson's way of circling promises. So you do these four steps. You identify the problem, you search scripture, you circle promises, and you pray them.

Max Lucado, another author looks at this a little bit differently and I thought it was valuable to share with you. He looks at claiming promises, like if it was a prescription. In the same way, if you went to a doctor and they would identify a problem, they would go through different medications that you could use. You would take that medication and you would use it daily. We can do the same thing with promises of God.

He says, "For every problem in life, God has given us a promise. Make it your aim to get so acquainted with these promises that you can write yourself a prescriptio" That way anytime you face a problem, you say, God, I know there's a promise in here for this, whether it's physical, mental, spiritual. No matter what your problem is, there is a promise of God in the Bible for it.

And so you can use those same four steps that I talked about with Mark Batterson. You can identify the problem, search the scripture, circle promises, and pray them. You do the same thing with this where you identify your problem. You search the scripture, you find a promise and you use it daily as your prescription, and whenever you do it in that manner, that prescription becomes something to lean on. You use it every single day, and you believe that you trust that prescription is going to relieve the problem in your life. That promise, you're gonna lean on it and God's gonna work it out on your behalf. And so I really, truly hope that one of these two ways speaks to your heart. They're just metaphors for using the promises of God in your life. But I'll tell you, they're truly, truly powerful. 

The Promises Give Hope

And so in our lives, the promises of God are meant to give us hope, when it's hard to come by, it's something to believe God for. And like we talked about a couple episodes ago, it shifts your focus. You can get so focused on the problem that you forget how powerful God is, and whenever you focus back on God, it makes the problem look smaller.

Just as an example, let's go back to a doctor example. If you have a real problem in your body, let's say you have stomach pain or something like that. You go to the doctor, you tell them about it. They run some tests, do some blood tests. They check out your stomach, they do an ultrasound, and the doctor comes in and tells you, "Here, I've got this medication. Two or three days, it's gonna clear you up." You walked in worried about a problem because you didn't have any solution. You walk out of that doctor's office, confident and believing that it's gonna get better. Nothing changed physically. You haven't taken a single pill yet, you just walked outta the doctor's office. Nothing physically had changed, but your belief and your hope had changed. Why? You got a promise from somebody you believed you could trust.

Maybe the promise of God, as you begin to pray, as you begin to apply it in your life, and you're believing God to do that thing, maybe the situation doesn't change immediately, but I hope that whenever you find the promise of God to lean on, that it shifts your focus. And all of a sudden you went from having a problem and no solution to now maybe you still have a problem, but you've got a promise to go along with it, that the solution is just around the corner.

And so as you go through life and problems will come up, you can go through those four steps. You can identify your problem, you can search scripture, circle the promises, and pray them. And praying, claiming those promises of God is choosing to hope rather than allowing worry to overcome you.

But throughout the rest of the season of the AfterYouth podcast we're gonna continue to talk about these promises of God, but we're gonna get more specific. Today. We talked about what the promises are, how to find them, and how to claim them over your life. But we're gonna get more specific and talk about promises that we can find in the Bible because I think it's important to not just tell you how to find them, but maybe to point you to some too, that can help you in whatever situation you're in right now.

Just for now, remember to identify the problem, search the scripture, circle the promise, and pray them.