The21stcenturyyouth

We make promises everyday, and if you are anything like me…we also break them (more than we would like to). I remember nights I would lay in bed and promise myself “Tomorrow, I will eat right”, or “Tomorrow will be day 1 at the gym” but uh…..you get the drift. I am sure that we have all experienced the event of a broken promise; some hurt more than others, some we can let stride, others we try to ‘punish’, even now we have legally binding contracts as an assurance that someone will keep their promise to us or face the consequences of breaking them.

Overall, we are used to promises being broken and resort to making sure that what was said is done either by micro-managing or just having an attitude of “If they come through, they come through…I don’t care, and if they don’t, I will not be too hurt”. So we just cut off expectations. Basically, I went through this banter to say I have realized that this is how I had come to be in my spiritual walk with God.

The bible is full of promises, God’s word: a promise for every moment and season of our lives. So how come somehow I couldn’t believe it? When He said, “All things work together for good” (Rom 8:28), I still felt abandoned when things did not go how I imagined, and even when He said “Do not be afraid” (Isaiah 41:10, John 14:27, 2 Timothy 1:7, Isaiah 43:1, Joshua 1:9, Isaiah 35:4, Mark 6:50, Deuteronomy 31:6, Isaiah 41:13-14..and so many more others), I still sometimes found myself crippled by all kinds of fears; fear of an unknown future, fear sometimes of the dark, fear of demons, fear of being alone, fear, fear…like God did not already promise that He is and will always be with me. God promised that the plans He has for me are good (Jer 29:11) but even I had doubts about that when my application to study in Canada in 2016 got rejected twice, so much so I decided not to give God what he wanted; me. (Looking back at that year as I sit on my bed in the US right now writing this…lol who did I think I was??). The biggest one of all?? God’s promises of love; He says “I love you unconditionally” (John 3:16, Romans 8:3, Psalm 139…) but I still felt everything but…like “He possibly couldn’t love me like this”, or do we top off with “I forgive you” (1 john 1:9, Hebrews 8:12, Psalms 103:12, Daniel 9:9, Hebrews 4:16) but we still feel unforgiven or even go lengths to punishing ourselves in the name of being punished by God. I know this because I’ve been through these emotions.

What I am trying to say is, God is not man that He should lie, nor the son of man that He should repent. What He says is “Yea, Amen”, His promises will never fail even to the end of the earth. Jesus said, “Heaven and Earth may pass away, but my words shall not pass away”. We all know these verses and can even dish them out as “memory verses” except when it comes time to use them in the battlefield of our minds when the enemy tries to shake us. Why do we project the worse unforgiving, unloving, fault-punishing parts of ourselves to God? When will we start believing God’s promises to us, even the ones He made personally to us in our quiet time with Him? How do we believe Him when our hearts have been broken by humans? One way I’ve learned: To remind myself of how many times He has broken a promise to me…NEVER.

I’ll be honest with you, I am in a place in my life right now where I don’t know what to do next and everyday the questions and doubts and fears try to dance in my mind. Somedays, sadly I give in and hop on the worry train, other days I triumph and read out Jeremiah 29:11 but I am learning to trust God more, walk by faith and believe His words will come to pass even if I can’t see it right now. If I may suggest one thing; find that thing or things you are constantly worried about, take a week to seek out all the scriptures say about it, feast on it, meditate on it, tell God how you honestly feel about it. Faith comes by hearing the word, it cannot be manufactured elsewhere. Our victory is in the words of God, because when we ingest the word, we speak it, and when we speak it and believe it, our lives take shape.

I have so much to say on this, but I will stop here. Here are some promises you can meditate on prayerfully and trust the Holy Spirit to open you up to many more. The bible is full of them!

Psalm 23

Isaiah 40:31

Psalm 27:5

Jeremiah 32:27

Ephesians 3:20

Luke 10:19

Psalm 29:11

I Corinthians 3:16

Psalm 30:5

Psalm 139

Psalm 103

Psalm 104

I love you,

Chito.