Anchoring promises

I recently watched a documentary called "A father's promise". It is about a study conducted by a university in Massachusetts regarding fatherhood. The documentary begins by interviewing a group of fathers whose child was being born in a particular hospital. The interviewer asked the fathers what their plan was, all of them promise to be a part of their child's life and participate in parenthood. Then the documentary switched to 10 years later where the researchers went to interview the fathers again. Out of 12 of the fathers, 8 are no longer in contact with their child. Scary isn't? Here are 12 fathers making a promise to their child to be a part of their life, and only 4 fathers actually kept that promise. I am not here to pass any judgment on the fathers, I just wanted to use this example to highlight how easily promises are broken in our society.

Promises are broken all the time around us, not just on TV. We see it happen in politics, friendships, ads, families, relationships... I mean, how many broken marriages have we witnessed even though there is the promise of taking each other until death do them apart? How many relationships ended even when there is the promise of everlasting love? How many friendships have ended when there is the promise of being friends forever? Someone once said that promises are like babies; easy to make, hard to deliver. I think it rings some truth. We've all made many promises to others and we've all had promises made to us. Sadly, many of these promises are broken at both end of the equation. When a promise is broken, there is always pain and suffering. And over time, we begin to put up a wall around our heart. We begin to lose faith in the promises made. Sometimes, we even expect promises to be broken.

However, although there are many broken promises in this world, we cannot let these keep us from trusting in the promises of God. Our God is a faithful God, He has made many promises in the bible and He has not broken any of these promises. One of the most well known promises God has made was with Abraham. He promised Abraham that a great nation will come out of him even though Sarah, Abraham's wife, was barren. But Abraham, being a man of faith, trusted in God's promise. He had the faith that God was going to bless him with a child and he trusted that God will fulfill His promise. In the end, what did God do? He delivered what He promised and a whole nation descended from Abraham. What does this mean for us? It means we can trust in His promises, even when they seem impossible. Paul reminded us in his letter to Hebrews,

"Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed it with an oath. God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure." Hebrews 6:17-19

In other words, God keeps His promises so that we have a hope to hold onto. Sometimes we are like a boat being tossed in the water, we are being pushed left and right, yanked in all directions. But God's promise is like an anchor, grounding us and holding us in place. So that no matter how strong the storm is, we are held in place and secured by our God.  

"Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful." Hebrews 10:23

I'm going to end this post with a quote from Corrie Ten Boom, a Dutch Christian who was sent to concentration camp for hiding Jews in her home. Let God's promises shine on your problem.