Laying Hold on the Promises of God

That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring – not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all. - Romans 1:16,17

Surely one of the most pathetic people in all of Scripture is Esau, the firstborn of Isaac and Rebekah.  Here is a man so bound to the earth that he evidenced no heavenly vision whatsoever. Esau was so bent on gratifying his flesh that he seems never to have given a thought about his soul, so short-sighted that he scorned the future and the promises of God. To satisfy his raging belly he sold his inheritance to his conniving brother, and forfeited the blessing of God’s covenant forever. He is described by Moses as having “despised his birthright” (Genesis 25:34). His whimpering and whining before his aged and deceived father (Genesis 27) is fruit of his wanton, frivolous, and irresponsible lifestyle. We hardly feel sorry for him as Jacob slinks away to Haran, the blessing of Abraham in tow.

Aren’t we all just a little bit like Esau?

God, the Apostle Peter reminds us, has given us precious and magnificent promises by which we may participate more fully in Him and the life He has prepared for us (2 Peter 1:4). But most of us have hardly begun to lay hold on those promises. We are so bound up in meeting our daily needs, pursuing our frivolous diversions, and satisfying our petty self-interest that we have not yet begun to consider the enormous treasury of grace that has been laid up for us. By right of the new birth in Jesus we are heirs to the riches of God’s glory, the vast treasure of Biblical worldview that can fill our lives with meaning, purpose and joy. But too many believers, it seems, have despised their birthright and are settling for lentils instead. Instead of living in the experience of the precious and magnificent, our relationship with God is little more than a means to securing today’s shallow happiness.

It’s time we began demanding more of our faith. It’s time we began laying hold on those marvelous promises of God.

A PATCHWORK OF GREEN
For several years, after I first became a Christian, I used a four-color pen to mark my Bible during my daily devotions. Red underlining indicated a command. Black highlighted an important doctrinal point.  Blue pointed me to texts that seemed to be immediately practical to my everyday life. And green underscored the various promises of God to His people, and to me.

I recall one time, after having pursued this practice for a number of years, casually thumbing through my Bible, reflecting on some of my favorite passages, suddenly being arrested by the numerous texts I had underlined in green. My Bible had become a veritable patchwork of green, so many were the promises of God I had identified! This began a serious attempt on my part to begin getting a handle on those promises, so that I could experience them more fully in my life. After all, these were promises God Himself was making to me, His child. They were mine by birthright, and I wanted to know them more completely and consistently.

I discovered that all the promises of Scripture can be summarized under six headings, conveniently suggested by the covenant promise God made to Abram in Genesis 12:1-3:

• “I will make you a great nation” – God was promising me that I would be part of a vast people, devoted to Him and dedicated to the task of fulfilling His purposes on earth.
• “I will bless you” – God would set His favor on me, draw me daily into closer communion with Himself, and fill my soul with a sense of well-being and hope that nothing in this life could eradicate.
• “I will make your name great” – Not that my name would be particularly great, but that, by sharing in His name, and especially in the name of His resurrected and reigning Son, my life would be shrouded in dignity, purpose, and influence beyond anything I could achieve on my own.
• “I will make you a blessing” – God would use my efforts to touch the lives of others with His grace and truth; He would use me to draw others into His covenant friendship and family.
• “I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse” – I did not need to fear either that I would want for anything I needed, or that men or spirits could harm me in any eternally destructive way.
• “In you all families of the earth shall be blessed” – What God is doing in and through me can overflow the boundaries on my narrow personal experience and reach people in other places and times with the Good News of His Kingdom.

Over the years, as I have continued reading and studying the Bible, these six promises have served both to motivate my pursuit of God and His Kingdom and to organize all the other promises of Scripture for me. Life has become for me a daily quest to lay hold on those promises more fully and more consistently.  And Abraham himself has served as my guide in this richly rewarding journey of faith.

LAYING HOLD ON THE PROMISES
In Romans 4, Paul points to Abraham as the father of all those who are heirs to the promises of God, and as the example we are to follow in more consistently making those promises our own. We may identify in his example five steps in this exciting adventure of appropriating the promises of God for daily living.

First, make sure you understand the promise as God intends it. The promise in focus here is that which God made to Abraham of a child to be born of Sarah’s womb. Three times Abraham had shown that he did not understand what God intended – when he looked to his own servant, Eliezer, as the fulfillment of the promise (Genesis 15); when he sought a child by Hagar, Sarah’s servant (Genesis 16); and when he offered Ishmael in response to God’s restatement of the promise (Genesis 17). Only when he understood fully that God intended the promised child to come through Sarah could he lay hold on that precious treasure. We need to make sure we understand what God is promising us, and have a clear sense of how those promises will work out in our lives.

Second, we need to believe that God will do what He has said (Romans 4:18).  When Abraham finally believed God, hope revived in him, a vision of the promise being realized began to take shape in his mind. He was able to begin planning the next steps in laying hold on that precious and magnificent promise.

Third, we need to resolve that no temporal obstacles can keep us from realizing what God has promised (Romans 4:19,20). Abraham had already allowed his age and Sarah’s barrenness to keep him from realizing the promise of God. Now, the promise fully grasped and his hope and resolve renewed, he stepped into the midst of these obstacles to claim the promise in spite of them.

Fourth, we must give glory and praise to God for His promises, as though we had already begun to realize them (Romans 4:20). Worship with thanksgiving and praise, and boasting to others about what God has promised, are clear ways of glorifying God for His promises. They signal to Him a heart of faith, and open hands, ready to receive what God has promised, knowing that He is always faithful to His Word.

Finally, we must take the necessary steps of faith, putting ourselves in the place where God can bring to pass what He has promised (Romans 4:20,21). Abraham had to go into his wife again, believing that a child would result from their relations. Abraham acted in faith, and God met him with the promised blessing.

Here then is a pattern for us to follow in laying hold on the promises of God, a daily agenda that can keep us from despising our birthright and lead us into a richer, fuller, and more powerful experience of God and the Biblical worldview.

PROMISES TO KEEP
Robert Frost once famously wrote about having “promises to keep,” so that he could not tarry along the road home. If he had promises to keep, how much more does our God! And He is more than willing to keep them, and is able to bring them to pass in our lives beyond anything we have ever dared to ask (Ephesians 3:20).

He promises that we may truly know Him, in a personal and intimate way (John 17:3).  He promises to answer our prayers, and show us mysteries and wonders to boggle our minds (Jeremiah 33:3).  He promises to guide us into all truth by His Holy Spirit (John 16:13); to give us power to bear witness to the risen Christ (Acts 1:8); to express in us supernatural gifts so that we might touch others with His grace (1 Corinthians 12:7-11); to surround us with His peace, regardless of the circumstances of our lives (Philippians 4:6,7); to defend us against the attacks of the devil and his minions (Psalm 35:4-6); to show us His glory and transform us increasingly into the very image of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 3:12-18); to use us in ministering grace and truth to others, unto the building-up of the Church (Ephesians 4:11-16); to provide all our needs (Philippians 4:19); to turn every situation and circumstance of our lives, even those most horrifying and unfavorable, to our blessing and good (Romans 8:28); to keep us in His hand and never to allow anything to separate us from His steadfast love (John 10:29; Romans 8:38,39); and on and on and on!

Are you living in those promises? Experiencing them and wallowing in them daily? Or are you so preoccupied with trite and trivial things that you just don’t have the inclination or time to unpack your birthright? Let us not despise what God has promised! Rather, let us follow the example of Abraham and press on to lay firm hold on all that God has promised us in the riches of His Word.

FOR REFLECTION
Does your daily life indicate that you are a promise-seeker or a birthright-despiser? How would your life be different if everything you did each day was motivated by the desire to lay hold on the promises of God?

T. M. Moore is dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of 20 books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet), and Culture Matters (Brazos). He and his wife and editor, Susie, make their home in Concord, Tenn.