Hello friends, welcome to Embolden. I'm Chris Shatter, an ordinary Christian living with and learning about an extraordinary God. Today is day 24 of 30 Days of Giving Glory to God here on the Embolden Podcast. And our verse today is John 1140.
Then Jesus said, Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of God? And I'm a very simple prayer today. Faithful Father, you have never lied and you never will. I believe you.
Amen. I had a Christian woman tell me this once. She said, Quote, I know God has forgiven me, but it's hard for me to believe it. It's too hard for me to forgive myself.
That's why I nodded along when I heard a Christian teacher once say that there's way too many of us out there that have accepted our Lord as Savior, but we just aren't living our lives like we believe His promises. It's even hard for me sometimes when I look in the mirror to see what God sees, to believe He loves me blemishes and all. It's hard to believe He will take care of me without my striving and worrying, but He will. Isaiah 26, 3, tells us, You will keep in perfect peace.
Those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. You know, friend, He has never ever lied. He never ever will. What might happen, however, is that He will fulfill a promise in ways you didn't expect, or in ways you may not agree with or even understand.
In fact, when I was doing a bit of research about God's promises, I found a blog that tried to refute God-fulfilling promises. In truth, the person sounded very wounded. He also sounded poorly educated about God's character and his ways. His first example was of Genesis 2, 17, when God admonishes Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree of knowledge, when he says, for when you eat from it, you will certainly die.
The blogger explained that not only had they eaten the fruit, but they went on to live for more than 900 years. So therefore, he thought God lied. But what he missed is this. One, their immediate death was a loss of the close spiritual relationship with God and their sinlessness.
And two, after 900 years, they did in fact die. You see, when we look at God's promises without knowledge of Him and through our own broken lenses, we can miss God's work. If we instead believe that God is the only perfect being to exist and His ways are always right, then we ask better questions and submit to Him in trust. I recently had a conversation with a godly woman about women as pastors.
Having become more educated about scripture, I felt confident in holding my own, as she said the Bible has conflicting lessons about this topic. And my first comment to her was this, God's word is never in conflict. If you see conflict, you're either misunderstanding the context, historical meaning, or having translation issues. Understanding that parts of God's will and God's promises may be difficult to accept also helps us to realize our simple desires rarely line up with God.
Friend, if you are struggling to accept that God will not back out of a promise to you or turn His back to you, you need to turn back to His Word. He is faithful, more faithful than anyone will ever be in your life. And for that, we can celebrate with glory to Him. I hope you enjoyed this episode of The Abolden Podcast.
Be sure to follow along so you don't miss any episode, and check out my blog at Embolden.net.