Jan 27 2009
When the Promise Doesn’t Come…
Has God ever made you a promise that you’ve been holding onto for dear life? You’ve envisioned it, waited for it, but for some reason it’s never materialized?
Well, don’t give up. Over and over in Scripture God made promises that were on the way. I Samuel 1 says Hannah, a woman of God, had yearned for a child for years. In the Jewish culture of her day a woman without children was disdained and thought cursed. Hannah was teased mercilessly by other women who were mothers. For years she begged God for a child, but nothing happened. Then one day it happened. Eli, the priest saw her praying in the temple and thought she was drunk, so desperate were her prayers. When he finally understood, Eli told her God had heard her prayers and that she would have a child. I Samuel 1:19 says: “And the Lord remembered her.” Her child, Samuel, whom she gave to the Lord at age three or four, listened to God from an early age, and was a huge blessing to Israel.
The same thing happened to Elizabeth, the cousin of Jesus’ mother, Mary, and the wife of Zachariah. She had never had a child and was quite elderly when the angel told her she would have a son and should name him John. She laughed when she heard the news.
Abraham and Sarah were also promised that from their seed God would make a great nation, whose descendants would number as the sands of the sea. But Sarah could not conceive for many years, and she despaired of it ever happening. Then when she was too old to physically bear a son, God gave her a miracle child, a son named Isaac, through whom the nation of Israel was born.
Scripture says God’s timing is much different than ours. To God, a day is as a hundred years, and one hundred years as a single day, so we must hold onto the promises of God, and refuse to give up hope. He never makes idle promises.
Just like these women you and I can count on God’s promises. We can believe that if God said it, it will happen. We need to hold on for dear life, praising God in faith, for that is a sweet fragrance that pleases God.
Don’t give up on God’s promise!
Because of His great love,
Nancy
