Clinging to the Promises of God

Jemi, Heavenly Angels for DALY TEACHERS FOUNDATION

Christians who do not know how to appropriate the promises of God remind me of a story about Crowfoot, the great chief of the Blackfoot confederacy in southern Alberta, Canada.  When Crowfoot gave the Canadian Pacific Railroad permission to cross tribal land from Medicine Hat to Calgary, the railway commission wanted to do something special for the chief.  So in return for his gracious act, Crowfoot received a lifetime railway pass, which he could use anywhere in Canada.

Crowfoot treasured the pass.  He put it in a leather case and proudly wore it around his neck for the rest of his life.  // Yet there is no record that the chief ever once availed himself of the right to travel on the Canadian Pacific Railroad.

Tragically, many Christians treat the promises of God the same way.  They may hang them on the wall, they may recite them to their children, they may believe them in their heads – but they do not know how to appropriate God’s Promises.

Think of it this way – if you give me a check and I never deposit it or cash it, the check is useless to me; I never appropriated your gift.  Similarly, the Holy Spirit has given us promises:  They are recorded in God’s word.  But what you do with these promises, how you apply them in your life, is up to you.

Because of the ease with which promises are made and broken today, and because we get away with not keeping our word, we think it’s all right to break our promises, the result is that some Christians have trouble taking God at His Word.

God DID NOT make frivolous promises that He does not intend to keep.  God is faithful to all His promises.    God’s promises may not be fulfilled exactly the way we want them to be, or at the time we want them to be, but He always keeps His promises.

Let’s look again at the biblical record and see how Elijah clung to the promises of God.  There are two principles we need to learn about God’s promises.  One principle is that some of God’s promises are conditional and others are unconditional; the second is that some promises are universal and some are personal
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