Day Twenty - The promises of God

What do you think of the new “plastic” money, our current bank notes? Well if you look on the note and you will find a promise on it. The promise is not that the note is worth anything, but that the bearer will be given it's worth. We use bank notes all the time – they are useful only if we spend them! If we hoard them us they are worthless. If put them in a museum they have very little value. But if we spend them then they can have great value to us and those around us, to our those who are in need and to those who don't know the “Promise giver”. For we know that the bank note can be trusted. It is when the bank notes cannot be trusted that society has a problem! When hyper-inflation happens the value of the promise on the notes is much reduced until they become worthless. The point is a promise is only worth anything if it can be trusted.

So how much more is that true of our heavenly Father. God's promises can be trusted and are valuable – but only when they are used. The Bible contains many promises, the Bible does not say that any of it is worth anything, unless it is read, and in reading it we see God's promises. And as we read of God's promises we can know that, just as with a bank note, we can share those promises - we can spend them, for we know that if we take them back to God He will fulfill them, just as the bank will give us the value of what is written on a bank note.

And in 2 Samuel David is taking God's promises back to God: "And now, LORD God, please do what you have promised me and my descendants". If we take God promises back to Him and say ”please do what you You have promised” then and “spend” those promises then God will honour them. If, however, we put them in our own private piggy bank, saying “I know God's promises for me”, but never sharing them, never showing them to others in the light of His love for them, then we are hoarding His promises for ourselves and they become like money put away for a rainy day, as some sort of personal insurance for the future. But God never meant His promises for our personal gain. David is asking God to do what He has promised His ancestors. He is asking for a whole nation, and as God's people we ask for all of humanity, for the person living next door, for the nice person and the villian, for one with power and the one sleeping out on the street, for the boss and the worker.

We stand on God's promises more than we trust the words on a bank note (which of course can fail!) but we need to spend God's promises. We need to go back to God and say “Do what you have promised me”. And God replies "Be it unto You even as thou wilt."

Read the rest of 2 Samuel 7:18-29 and see how David prays to God about the promises that God has made to God's people. And then see the promise God has made to You and how our pray should be “please do as You have promised me and Your people”.

Adrian Burr