When God’s Promises Don’t Seem to Prove True
“…All the Lord’s promises prove true,” Psalm 18:30
Perhaps no one is more to be believed with such a sweeping claim than the soon-to-become King David, writing this when God saved him from Saul, who’d spent years hunting him down to kill him.
I love the word prove here— proving something takes time. David knew God had anointed him king, yet here he was running. Just because rescue didn’t come in his time and way didn’t mean it wasn’t coming.
Get nerdy with me for a sec:
“The Word of the Lord is tried,” is the way KJV translates this, tried (and proved) referring to the process of refining gold.
“God is not a man that he should lie.” (Numbers 23:19)
“For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay.” (Habakuk 2:3)
Both of those verses use the same word for “lie,”which can also be translated “fail” or “be in vain.” His promises cannot fail; they are not empty. If his Word promises it, it will prove true. Wait for it.
As we speed toward the end of this year, it seems increasingly more important to cling to God’s promises, repeating them as often as we need the reminder, letting faith grow until we see the physical reality in our life.
I encourage you to read Psalm 18 this month. It’s one of the longest psalms, at 50 verses. If you read just three verses a day, you’ll have read the whole psalm twice by October 31. I have the Bible app on my phone, which makes it easy to listen to the full psalm on my morning commute.
~ One Day Later~
After yesterday’s post about all God’s promises proving true, we received some hard news. Hope-dashing news. News that helps us better understand the haunted looks we see in other people’s faces. News that leaves us asking God, “This too?” And “What about your promises to us?” And “What on earth do we do now?”
News that challenges the statement,
“All God’s promises prove true.”
I’m sharing this because God’s Words are NOT empty, even when I feel empty. When His words echoing in the cavity of my chest sound hollow, it’s because of the chamber they’re in, not the quality of the words themselves.
It’s easy to skim over the part of yesterday’s story where David was on the run from the king who wanted him dead. It was a few words to us, but it wasn’t a few words to him. It was YEARS.
What about Joseph, rotting in prison over something he didn’t do? Or Abraham, waiting past the age of childbearing for his promised child? Or Sarah, faced with the ridiculousness of her age and barrenness?
And what about the process I mentioned yesterday, of gold being tried? In order for the impurities to be removed, it has to be melted, again and again. Oh God, will we ever be done being melted? There are almost 100 verses in the Bible comparing our experiences with gold being tried. Ugh—lovely.
But.
David, Joseph, Abraham, Sarah, (to name a few!) had something in common. During their years of disappointment, rejection, hopes dashed yet again, they didn’t let their circumstances turn their hearts bitter against God. They didn’t judge who God was by what was happening to them. They drew closer to God. Hebrews 11 says mocking Sarah “judged God faithful who had promised.” They tried God’s promises until finally, they proved true. And they submitted their own selves to being tried too, until they emerged as pure gold.
The last verse in Hebrews 11, the great Hall of Faith that recounts these impossible stories of our spiritual ancestors, says that their stories are not complete without our stories.
Thank God, You are outside of time, while we are bound to the impossibility of the here and now.
Thank you God, for mourning with us in the middle, even while you see the end from the beginning.
Thank you that since you’re outside time, Your promises have already been fulfilled in Christ with a resounding “Yes!” (2 Cor. 1:20), and we get to walk them out with our time-bound feet until we see Your Heavenly reality become earthly reality.
P.S. This painting is from the October page of my 2024 calendar. Comment below for info on when the 2025 calendar will be released!
