He Keeps His Promises (episode 48)

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Today you will know this is true.

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God keeps his promises.

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Welcome back to When You Love a Prodigal.

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I hope you appreciated our November and

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December episodes on gratitude and Advent and Christmas,

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and then entering the new year with some lessons that I have

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learned that I hope will be encouraging and helpful to you.

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My Prodigal wilderness journey was long.

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My friends encouraged me and prayed for me,

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but they had families of their own.

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My co-workers listened to my stories,

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but didn't really identify.

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My husband was so helpful and supportive,

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but he was busy and gone a lot.

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The Prodigal wilderness was often lonely,

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and I felt alone and overwhelmed and

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stressed. These are the feelings I often encountered.

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Probably you have also felt alone on your journey with your loved one.

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Others pray, encourage, share our burdens,

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but still we feel the weight weighing on us.

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Amazingly, our God offers to carry it all with us and for us.

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He says, you're not alone.

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I am with you.

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In both the Old and New Testaments,

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we discover that God has revealed names for himself,

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that promise that he will always be with us.

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God, who we know is the most high and almighty God,

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makes this remarkable choice.

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He dwells with his people,

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first in the tabernacle and then in the temple.

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In Ezekiel's vision of the New Jerusalem,

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we see a new name for the city, Jehovah Shema.

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The name of the city from that time on will be,

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the Lord is there.

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There was this assurance that God was always there,

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whether it was in a tabernacle or in the temple,

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he would be there and they knew they could go and he would be there.

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In the past and in the future,

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we can know that we are not alone because God's very name assures us that he is with us by his own choice.

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Then we go to the New Testament and it gets better.

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In Isaiah, we see another name for God's presence with us.

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Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign.

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The Virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and will call him Emmanuel.

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We are told by Matthew that this prophecy is fulfilled in Jesus.

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All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet,

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that the Virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and they will call him Emmanuel,

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which means God with us.

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This is what the incarnation is all about.

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God became human so that he could be with us in the flesh.

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But this presence of our God with us is so much more in Jesus.

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He is not just with us,

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he actually comes through his spirit to live in us.

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He doesn't just dwell with us.

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We're not just in the same house.

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He indwells us.

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He lives in us through his spirit.

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Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's spirit dwells in you?

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First Corinthians.

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Even as God dwells with the children of Israel in a temple,

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now we have actually become the temple of the indwelling God.

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So though our wilderness journey with our prodigals may take us through dark nights,

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on rough paths, into scary situations,

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and beyond our capacity to endure,

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God is with us every step of the way.

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He hears our cries.

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He comforts our hearts.

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He strengthens our resolve.

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He fills us to overflowing with his love and grace.

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We have this promise.

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God has said, never will I leave you.

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Never will I forsake you.

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Promises. We all make promises.

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Big ones. My husband and I certainly did when we got married 46 years ago.

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We've kept them.

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Not everyone does.

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Another promise I made was to follow God's path for my life,

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and not my lifelong tendency to demand my own way.

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Keeping that promise most of the time.

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So many lesser promises to go somewhere with somebody or to get an article done on a due date or to return a call.

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Not always do I do those.

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Or the promises I make to myself about eating right, exercising, keeping order at my home.

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Not so good at those.

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And then there are the promises made by my prodigal.

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It took a while, but I eventually learned that when an addict is talking, it is usually a lie.

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They're going to say whatever they think they need to say to make you get off their back or give you what they want.

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Where he told us he was going, often, had no connection to where he was really going.

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We have just looked at several names of God and the promises that they embody.

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We know that he sees and he hears that he is our shepherd.

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He is our peace. He is with us.

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He is even a banner of victory for us.

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But perhaps we find ourselves asking, really, do these promises come true?

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Can I believe these promises?

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I haven't seen any of my loved ones promises happening.

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Can I trust that God's will?

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Can we believe that God's names are promises?

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That he will be faithful to who he is as defined by his names.

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Undeniably so.

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His word says so.

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I shared this passage in Psalm 145 with you when we talked about rest in an earlier episode.

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Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom and your dominion endures through all generations.

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The Lord is trustworthy in all he promises and faithful in all he does.

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In the episodes on rest, we looked at eight scriptures affirming the evidence of God's faithfulness.

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Even when we are confronted with the unfaithfulness of the children of Israel,

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of his followers through history, and even of you and me, we often are unfaithful.

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We are not keeping our promises.

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I know I am grateful that God extends mercy and grace when I deserve judgment.

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Over and over, he is there, always trustworthy, always faithful.

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Here are some more assurances of God's unfailing faithfulness.

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David in Psalm 26, I have always been mindful of your unfailing love and have lived in reliance on your faithfulness.

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Wow.

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Psalm 57 says, for great is your love, Lord, reaching to the heavens.

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Your faithfulness reaches to the skies.

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And in Psalm 86, but you, Lord, are compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.

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It is that same faithfulness that makes another characteristic of God unavoidable.

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He keeps his promise.

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His word is filled with hundreds of promises because there are hundreds of names of God.

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And each one is a promise that he will be true to.

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He is good for every one of them, even the ones that don't yet seem fulfilled to us.

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Rejoice in these good words.

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God is not human that he should lie, not a human being that he should change his mind.

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Does he speak and then not act?

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Does he promise and not fulfill?

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Joshua says, not one of all God's good promises to Israel failed.

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Every one was fulfilled.

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As the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish,

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so is my word that goes out from my mouth.

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It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

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Oh, what promises our God has made to us.

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And you know what he says?

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All of them are yes in Jesus.

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Forgiveness, a relationship with himself, abundant life, eternal life, peace, comfort, hope.

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And one more thought that I love.

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He hears and answers prayer.

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The righteous cry out and the Lord hears them and he delivers them from all their troubles.

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A favorite story of mine is Daniel, who had called on the Lord with many questions.

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When the answer finally arrived sometime later, delivered by an angel, I love the angels' greetings.

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As soon as you began to pray, Daniel, a word went out, which I have come to tell you, for you are highly esteemed.

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Do not be afraid, Daniel, since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God,

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your words were heard and I have come in response to them.

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Sometimes the answers are not clear to us.

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Sometimes the timing is not what we had in mind.

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Sometimes it seems like we wait forever.

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Sometimes he answers in different and surprising ways.

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But know this, we can trust our God to keep his promises.

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Paul tells us why, if we are faithless, he remains faithful for he cannot deny himself.

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May you know that God has heard your prayers and his answers will be right and at the right time.

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He is a faithful promise keeper.

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So think back a little bit over all the names of God that we've talked to over the past several weeks.

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Which one has been most meaningful to you?

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Perhaps the shepherd's psalm and that he's taking care of you.

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Perhaps that he sees and he knows what's going on in your life, that he hears your prayers,

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that he will give you victory in this hard battle that you're fighting or the assurance that he's with you.

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Some other name of God that has been helpful to you.

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And when have you seen God keep the promises in his names?

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When could you think of an answer to prayer that God clearly was keeping his promise?

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Next week, we will wrap up our look at prayer.

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And then for the two weeks after that, we will be having two wonderful conversations with special guests you won't want to miss.