That God has made you a promise does not always mean that He must perform it. Shocked? How you treat His promise determines what you get of it. To Moses, God said about certain of the Israelites all of whom had departed Egypt, headed in the same direction of the Promised Land, “Surely there shall not one of these men of this evil generation see that good land, which I sware to give unto your fathers” (Deuteronomy 1:35). God had firmly sworn, but He was under no obligation to perform the promise to certain persons. Fulfilment of promise was based not only on the promise made but also on the nature of its reception; it was based not only on the integrity of the Promise Maker but also on the character of the receiver.
How you treat God and His promise decides what you get from Him. Not everyone that left Egypt saw the Promised Land, even though everyone of them had received the same promise and left in the hope of that promise from the God that “cannot lie” (Titus 1:2).
Receiving a promise from God does not always guarantee fulfilment of the promise, if one does not continue to treat with reverence the prophecy received and the God who gave it. Every promise by God is not automatic, which is why some will mourn at some point in their existence, “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved” (Jeremiah 8:20). Jesus made a similar lamentation over a city whose otherwise sure promise from God, it seemed, was expiring tragically, “If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now …” (Luke 19:42).
To Eli His high priest, God sternly said, “ALTHOUGH I promised that your branch of the tribe of Levi could always be my priests, it is ridiculous to think that what you are doing can continue. I will honor only those who honor me, and I will despise those who despise me” (1 Samuel 2:30, The Living Bible). The King James Version puts God’s remarks very bluntly, “Be it far from me…”; promise terminated, without God becoming a promise breaker or less God than before.
How do you treat God?
September 27, 2021.