I can’t tell you how many promises I have broken. A zillion, perhaps? To my kids and wife and church. With every ounce of good intention I swear up and down I will do what I say I will do. And then I blow it. We all do. We continue to make promises to ourselves and others, knowing full well we do not have the required inner fortitude to fulfill every one of them. I guess this is what the words I’m sorry are for.

But then there is God—a completely other kind of person.

He makes grand promises and he keeps every one of them. “For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory” (2 Corinthians 1:20). Bottom line: God is the ultimate promise keeper through His perfect Son Jesus.

But which promises are actually for us today in 2017? In other words, are all the promises God makes to Israel for us? What about when he promises something to a particular person, like Habakkuk, in the 7thcentury BC? What about when a promise is tethered to a particular situation in time? Still for us?

Below is a handy rubric when reading and applying biblical promises to our lives:

1. A proverb is not always a promise. This is a common mistake, as teachers or well-meaning husbands enthusiastically promise their wives relational depths with their children as they quote, “Her children rise up and bless her; her husband also, and he praises her” (Proverbs 31:28). I wish that were always true. However, the proverbs are not airtight promises. They are general principles for living. This is certainly true with the oft-repeated, “Train up a child in the way he should go . . . “(Proverbs 22:6) with the lingering promise being that the child will not depart from it. Training up a child with the gospel is wise, but it is not a guarantee he will follow Jesus.

2. Conditional promises. We’re all familiar with IF/THEN promises. We give them to our children all the time. “If you clean your room, then you can get some ice cream.” Or the negative IF/THEN–“If you hit your sister again, then you will not get to go to your friend’s house this weekend.”
God also makes promises that are predicated on our obedience. We see this in passages like 2 Chronicles 7:14–If you humble yourselves and pray, then I will respond. Or James 1:4–If you ask for wisdom, then I will give wisdom. Conditional promises are the reminder that God wants us to participate in what he is doing.

3. Don’t back God into a corner kind of promises. I usually cringe when I hear people unabashedly quote, “Ask whatever you wish in my name and it will be given to you,” (John 15:7) as they give God their laundry lists of weak-willed desires in prayer. This belief that they can manipulate God into “keeping his word” is a massive misunderstanding of who they’re dealing with. God isn’t the clerk at the local convenience store, but the Creator and sustainer of the universe whose primary desire is to grow us up into Christ-likeness by whatever means necessary. His promises, all of them, are rooted in his character. He is not a gumball machine that spits out prizes as we repeat spiritual phrases.

4. Historical promises. If I hear Jeremiah 29:11 quoted one more time during a crisis, I’m going to scream. This mainstay of American Evangelicalism and the cash cow of Christian coffee mug producers has convinced so many that God will always prosper us in every way and will never bring believers into a place of pain. Jeremiah 29:11 is part of a historically-rooted promise. When we read it in context, we see that Israel has been taken into captivity by Babylon (at the direction of God, by the way). Their captivity would last 70 years, and the promise was that the captivity, pain, loss of corporate identity, and place of worship would be a source of blessing to them in the long run, despite the obvious suffering that would accompany their captivity. Be careful which promises you pick and choose.

A couple of thoughts:

Avoid living out of Instagram promises. I’m like anyone else—it’s nice to be lifted out of despair with an appropriate verse plastered over a perfect sunset. Like, share, retweet, and get all the likes to boot. But don’t drop anchor in the shallow water of feel-good promises alone. Root yourself in the difficult truths and promises that are also rooted in the powerful grace of God. How about Matthew 10:22? “You will be hated by everyone on account of My name . . . ” I can’t imagine this gem getting retweeted. But it’s still true. And more importantly, this promise takes us into deeper places with God. The promise of future rejection reminds us of the rejection that Jesus bore on our account and secures our place in his family. And while we will not revel in this future rejection, it comforts us to know that we are fully accepted by God in the middle of it. What a beautiful promise!

Read the bible. Devotionals are fine. Books about the bible are fine. Sermons explaining the bible are fine. Even Bible Promise books are fine. But these are not substitutes for reading the bible on your own. Let God, in his own way, in your own mess, speak to you. Believe it or not, he is bigger than bite-sized promises. He is the promise maker. When all we do is grab hold of his promises without grabbing hold of the promise maker, we become idolaters. So read the bible—all of it. Promises, warnings, history, law, and letter are all for us. It is beautiful and worth every minute.