We hope that you have had a wonderful Christmas! But we recognize that as the busyness of the holiday season subsides and we start planning for the new year, we are often left feeling like we have been hit by a truck, with a huge emotional drain. For the next 11 days, our prayer is that you will be gentle with yourself and allow some of God’s promises to help remind you of His extravagant love for you as you look toward a new year.
Read:
Numbers 23:19 “God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?”
Luke 1:27 “For no word from God will ever fail.”
I went to my friend Barb’s memorial service last Saturday.
Barb was a mother, grandmother, wife, sister, aunt, youth group leader, nurse, and friend to many. She was a Christian.
When I opened the program for her memorial service, I couldn’t help but notice that directly after the “Welcome” was “Promises from Scripture”. You would be right if you thought that these specific Promises all reminded the attendees of the eternal life we will share in Heaven with God the Father, and His promises of comfort to those left behind.
But as the time of sharing began, the family shared how Barb had left behind many, many volumes of prayer journals and marked up, highlighted and dog-eared bibles.
From my experience in youth group and other places I knew Barb to be a Godly woman, no question. One thing that stood out to me in that service was how she didn’t just lean into the promises of God to remember her eternal reward as her earthly body failed her, but how she depended on them throughout her entire life.
Friends and family told story after story of Barb’s faithfulness and how she took the Word of God into her life the same way she took breath. Every moment.
How fitting it was that God’s Promises were the headline of her memorial!
As we consider God’s promises over the next few days, I’m encouraged to meditate on how Barb lived and the example she set for me in the forty years that I knew her: dwelling in the Promises of God.
I’ll miss you Barb – and thanks for this last lesson.
“True faith is never found alone; it is always accompanied by expectation. The man who believes the promises of God expects to see them fulfilled. Where there is no expectation, there is no faith.” A.W. Tozer
Pray: “Father God, as I meditate on your promises this week, I pray that you would guide me by your Spirit to specific promises that I could claim daily as I draw closer to you. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”
