God is Faithful to His Promises

"Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful." (Hebrews 10:23)

This verse is one I have often missed the depth of because it's in the middle of a number of verses on meeting together and encouraging one another. But this short verse contains a great reminder for us.

As followers of Christ we profess hope in Jesus Christ to save us and offer us forgiveness for our sins. This is a hope we can hold onto without concern. It is true. That's why we can boldly share it with others and why we're told to. That's why we can hold onto it no matter what comes our way.

The second part of this verse is what's important. It gives us the reason why we can hold onto hope in Jesus Christ without wondering if it's stable.

God is faithful. He will keep His promises. And He has promised that Jesus' sacrifice was enough and gives us direct access to Him. We can live in the assurance that God's promise is true because He is faithful.

Scripture is full of promises God made that He kept.

• God promised Noah that He would never destroy the whole earth again with a flood. (Genesis 8:20-9:17)
• God promised Joshua He would go with him always. (Joshua 1:1-9)
• God promised Moses He would give him the words to say to Pharaoh and favour with the Israelites. (Exodus 3 & 4)
• Jesus promised He would be with us always. (Matthew 28:20)

Based on these and many more examples, we can be confident that God will keep His promises because He is faithful.

Reading Scripture and seeing that God always keeps His promises gives me hope. We have hope because we serve a God Who is faithful to His word. We can cling to the promises He has made based on the past.

We serve a faithful God!

Live What You Say You Believe

If you're a regular reader here, you've probably noticed I took a bit of a break from writing here in the last week or so. It wasn't planned or I would have told you about it in advance. Sometimes life just seems to necessitate pulling back for a time.

A couple weeks ago, I wrote a couple of posts that came from a Bible study I'm doing with some women from my church. I was talking about changing our view when God interrupts our plans and beginning to see those times as divine interventions - as opportunities to join God in His purposes. I also talked about how we respond to those divine interventions.

Looking back at my life, I could see times when God interrupted my plans and invited me to join in on His. And I could see how I responded them.

But what I didn't know when I wrote those posts was that God was about to interrupt my plans again. He wasn't going to just let it be something I wrote about.

And isn't that how God works? He doesn't want things to just be head knowledge. He wants them to get down deep into our hearts. And for that to happen we have to live it. Because when we walk through the experience we have to decide if what we say we believe is what we actually believe.

That is one thing I've learned about God - He wants us to live it. He doesn't want it to be something we just talk about. He wants us to be transformed by what we say we believe and live it out.

When is the last time God took something that you could talk about to others and made sure you were also living it?

The God of Second Chances

"Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time . . ." (Jonah 3:1)

I love what this verse says about God and second chances.

Jonah had been told by God to go to Ninevah and preach against them. He went as far as he could in the other direction because he didn't want to go preach to his enemies.

But, even after running from what God told him to do, Jonah wasn't disqualified from doing what God had asked him to do. God gave him a second chance to do what he had originally been asked to do.

God spoke to Jonah again. God gave Jonah the same job again. And the second time Jonah followed through with what God said.

And the good news is that God offers the same opportunity to us. Just like Jonah, we often run the other way from things God tells us to do. When we don't want to do those things, we will look for ways not to do them.

But, if we realize the error of our ways and stop running from God, He gives us a second chance too. We get the opportunity to do what God says the second (or third or fourth, or 100th) time.

We serve a God of second chances. The requirement to get that second chance is that we stop running from what God is saying.