Ability

 Our little one came home with a stomach bug. Because we’ve always taught her to be generous and share, she decided to spread the joy, and the whole family is now sharing in what can only be classified as a good old-fashioned purge. It’s been a minute for me, I can’t even remember the last time, but here we are, getting through it as a family and looking slimmer by the day.

A promise is only as good as the person making it. Not only must they be able to keep the promise they made, but they must also intend to do so and have the wherewithal to carry it through. Some people make promises they never plan on keeping. Politicians fall into this category, and they’ve been at it for so long that if one accidentally happens to keep a promise, it’s a shock and a surprise.

Another kind of promise is individuals promising things they have no way of making good on. Young men in love fall into this category most often, promising the moon and the stars to a young lady who hurries home and makes room on her dresser for them. It’s not that the young man has no intention of keeping the promise. Unlike the politician, he just has no way of keeping it. They haven’t built ladders tall enough to reach the stars, and the moon seems kind of heavy to carry through a young lady’s front door.

Then you have the problem of more than one young man promising the moon and stars to more than one young lady. Granted, as far as the stars are concerned, there are plenty in the heavens, but there’s just one moon. Are they going to fight over it? Will the last man standing be able to deliver the moon to his beloved while all the others sulk in the street, wondering how they will explain their failure to the girl who is fully expecting the moon to be delivered at any moment?

The thing about God is that He never promises something He can’t deliver. He will never try to bait and switch you, He will never promise you something only to show up empty-handed and make up some excuse as to why He couldn’t make it work. It doesn’t matter how improbable what He promised might seem to human intellect. The fact that it was He who promised it makes His ability to see it through a certainty.

Isaiah 43:2, “When you pass through the water, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, nor shall the flame scorch you.”

But how could this be? Fire burns. It is an immutable absolute. Yet, God promised that you will not be burned when you walk through the fire, nor will the flame scorch you. It’s a promise made by the only One who can see it through, and that’s enough for me. I don’t need to know how the flames will not scorch me; I just know that they won’t. How can I be so sure of this? Because it was God who said as much, and He will never promise something beyond His ability to deliver.

Men do it all the time. They make promises they can’t deliver on. Whether they’re trying to impress somebody or seem like more of a big shot than they are, they’ll make promises so grandiose that one wonders if they are royalty and are living the life of a lowly grocery store cashier as an experiment of some sort.

God doesn’t need to impress you. He doesn’t need to impress me. He doesn’t need to make promises He can’t keep just to wow us or make us think more of Him. He is already God. There’s no next rung; there’s no greater. Thus the reason we can rest in the promises of God.

Not only will He never promise something He can’t deliver, God will never promise something He does not intend to make good on. Granted, some promises are conditional, and we will get into that at a later date, Lord willing, but whenever God makes a promise, He fully intends to keep it.

He is not double-minded, He is not double-tongued, and He means what He says without equivocation. Knowing this, all that remains is to determine what God didn’t promise and what He did promise so that we might walk boldly into tomorrow.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.