The Promises of God.
In 2020, the Lord put on my heart to inscribe The Attributes of God for our 2020 Inscribe the Word season. To focus on God's Attributes has put a turbulent year in the proper perspective. He is omnipotent, omniscient, eternal, holy, unchangeable, faithful, sovereign, full of peace and grace, righteous and just, and He has seen and kept us during an unprecedented year.
Sometime around June of 2020, I began praying and seeking the Lord for the theme for 2021's Inscribe the Word season. I juggled a few ideas, but nothing seemed to sit right in my spirit. That is until I came to Hebrews 6:13-20.
"God also bound himself with an oath, so that those who received the promise could be perfectly sure that he would never change his mind.
So God has given both his promise and his oath. These two things are unchangeable because it is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us." - Hebrews 6:17-18 NLT
As I studied these verses, I found great encouragement in the persecution, trials, and tribulations 2020 brought to our table. I held on to two unchangeable things: The Promises of God and His Oath. All of God's promises will come to pass. Just as He fulfilled His promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, so He will fulfill His promise to us.
He said it, and He will do it.
He cannot lie.
He cannot change.
I became fascinated by The Promises of God like I never had in all my years as a Christian. I am not just talking about the "popular promises" - the ones we hang on our walls and paste on coffee mugs. I began thinking about ALL of God's promises - promises so vital that He swears on Himself that He will keep them.
I couldn't shake this passage of Scripture in Hebrews 6, so I went to my little library of books to find more resources to unpack these verses. Before he died, my dad was a Pastor, and I have his library of books. Sitting right there on my shelf was a book by Dr. Herbert Lockyer published in 1962 that my dad has had for years. The Lord confirmed what He had been stirring in my heart as I stared at the title. The theme for 2021's Inscribe the Word came blazing to the surface of my spirit.
In 2021, we are inscribing
THE PROMISES OF GOD.
ALL THE PROMISES OF GOD.
Dr. Herbert Lockyer was born in England in 1886. He studied at the Glasgow Bible Institute, and for over twenty-five years pastored in England and Scotland. Dr. Lockyer wrote a 21-volume series of books known as the All Series, where he painstakingly combed through the Bible to find All the Miracles of the Bible, All the Men of the Bible, All the Women of the Bible, and many more volumes. I am grateful to hold this series of books, one of which is All of the Promises of God.
Some have said All the Promises of God is a daunting read. I admit it took me a few times to get through the material with some level of understanding.
So, as we open up our study on The Promises of God, I will attempt to swim through Dr. Lockyer's words, simplify the text, and share some of his thoughts with you. The Promises of God blog series will contain four posts, and this introduction. I hope they give you an excellent framework for starting the 2021 Promises of God Series.
If you would like to purchase a copy of Dr. Lockyer's All the Promises of God, CLICK HERE.
THE 2021 PLAN.
Have you ever thought about how many Promises of God there are in the Bible? Some have suggested around 30,000. That number seems a little far-reaching as 31,173 verses make up the Holy Bible.
In 1956, Time Magazine published an article about a man named Everet R. Storms. Mr. Storms was a schoolteacher in Kitchener, Canada. On his 27th reading of the Bible, he decided to tally up the promises found in Scripture. He totaled 8,810.
Whatever number you come to, it is clear that God has given us a promise-a-day for years and years to come. Our 2021 season will focus on 366 of them, and not just inscribing or reading these promises, but also embracing, claiming, and hopefully seeing them come to pass.
Each month's promises won't be characterized in a specific way or by one particular theme. They will instead be like markings of a treasure map. We will journey through the Scriptures each month to find them and claim them as our own.
FAITH'S CHECKBOOK.
As I was reading Dr. Lockyer's book, All the Promises of God, he referenced a C.H. Spurgeon book. In 1888, Spurgeon published a daily devotional called Faith's Checkbook. In the preface of the work, Spurgeon said,
"A promise from God may very instructively be compared to a check payable to order. It is given to the believer with the view of bestowing upon him some good thing. It is not meant that he should read it over comfortably and then have done with it. No, he is to treat the promise as a reality, as a man treats a check.
He is to take the promise, and endorse it with his own name by personally receiving it as true. He is by faith to accept it as his own. He sets to his seal that God is true, and true as to this particular word of promise. He goes further, and believes that he has the blessing in having the sure promise of it and therefore he puts his name to it to testify to the receipt of the blessing.
This done, he must believingly present the promise to the Lord, as a man presents a check at the counter of the Bank. He must plead it by prayer, expecting to have it fulfilled. If he has come to Heaven's bank at the right date, he will receive the promised amount at once. If the date should happen to be further on, he must patiently wait till its arrival; but meanwhile he may count the promise as money, for the Bank is sure to pay when the due time arrives.
Some fail to place the endorsement of faith upon the check, and so they get nothing; and others are slack in presenting it, and these also receive nothing. This is not the fault of the promise, but of those who do not act with it in a common-sense, business-like manner.
God has given no pledge which He will not redeem, and encouraged no hope which He will not fulfil."
Spurgeon so vulnerably goes on to say that he put this volume together while he was "wading in the surf of controversy." During a time of tribulation, bereavement, and affliction, Spurgeon held onto the promises of God.
"The waters rolled in continually, wave upon wave. I do not mention this to exact sympathy, but simply to let the reader see that I am no dry-land sailor. I have traversed full many a time those oceans which are not Pacific: I know the roll of the billows, and the rush of the winds.
Never were the promises of Jehovah so precious to me as at this hour. Some of them I never understood till now; I had not reached the date at which they matured, for I was not myself mature enough to perceive their meaning."
All of the Promises of God we will be inscribing in this series correspond to the daily devotions written by Charles Spurgeon in Faith's Checkbook. If you would like to include the daily devotional readings in your time, Inscribing the Word, you can grab a copy of Spurgeon's devotional HERE.
THE PROMISES OF GOD.
In 2 Peter 1:4, Peter says, "because of his glory and excellence, he has given us great and precious promises. These are the promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world's corruption caused by human desires."
Oh, Friends, we have a declaration from God and assurance from His Word that He will accomplish all that He said He would do. "All of God's promises have been fulfilled in Christ with a resounding "Yes!" And through Christ, our "Amen" (which means "Yes") ascends to God for his glory." (2 Corinthians 1:20)
I am so excited to take this year-long journey with you through The Promises of God. My prayer is that you see the fulfillment of His promises, embrace them, claim them, and see more of God's Attributes as you study His promises.
