This past week I was asked a question. One I didn’t have an immediate answer to.
“What are some of the promises God has spoken over your life?”
I am a little embarrassed to admit in that moment, my mind went blank. I know He has promised so many things to me and yet here I was, dumbfounded when asked to name a few. They were there, deep down somewhere, covered in dust due to neglect. I had forgotten.
What about you? What comes to mind when I ask you: what is a promise God has spoken over your life?
Are you like me – have you forgotten?
I don’t want to forget these precious things God has spoken – they are my foundation and keep me going when things start to feel impossible or when I literally feel weighed down by everything going on around me. I made a choice that day – to dive in and listen to my Father. To ask Him to remind me of the things I’ve forgotten or shoved to the side. To draw me close and whisper His promises to my heart once again. To write them down and pray into them, to meditate on them, and draw strength from them.
For some, the word promise invokes cringing or bitterness – a reaction from too many unfulfilled promises by people who claimed to love them. But a promise from God Himself will never be broken. How do I know this? Because I know my God and I know His character. I also know from the countless promises already fulfilled in Scripture! Abraham, Noah, the promise of the Messiah – just to name a few.
God is unchanging – steady and constant. He is faithful. He is patient. He is compassionate. He is good and He loves His children with a depth we can never fully comprehend.
So, when I asked God to remind me of some of His promises for me, He spoke instantly. And one of them left me floored.
Abundant Life – John 10:10, “The thief comes only to kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”
He came so that we could have life to the FULL and nothing short of it! This is when God also brought John 14:6 (a familiar one for many of you) to my mind, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Jesus IS the life. I had never really seen a connection between these verses until now, but if God’s whole plan was to come so we could have life and Jesus declares He IS the life…another way you could state this promise is:
I came that they may have Me, and have Me to the full.
Jesus came so we could be fully reconciled with God, so that we could once again have full access to His throne and sit at His feet, soaking Him in. He came so we could have all of Him – to know Him on an intimate level. The whole point is relationship with Him and all that flows from such a relationship with the God of the universe – love as we’ve never known, shared, full inheritance, seeing Kingdom on earth as it is in Heaven, the fruits of the Spirit…I could go on and on!
You’re probably reading this, still waiting for the big revelation or insight, but there it is: abundant life. He holds this promise in His outstretched, nail-scarred hands, offering it to each of us. It’s so simple.
Simple and beautiful. And it shifts everything.
Once you grasp what Jesus meant by this promise, nothing short of abundance will do.
My prayer is that we would stop forgetting. Can we stop settling for hollow imitations of abundant life? Thrills, surface level relationships, media, things…I pray we remember every single day that we were destined for more – so much more.
I challenge you to dig into this promise and to ask Him for yourself – “what are the promises you have for me God?”
He’ll show you. He’s good like that…and He’s pretty crazy about you.
