A few weeks ago, I was walking in downtown Cincinnati on the day before the start of the Christian Retail Show. I had never been to Cincy before and was excited to discover a new city. I found a little bookstore near fountain square and browsed for a few minutes. I was about to leave when a magazine cover caught my eye. It was the new Sports Illustrated issue. The cover featured LeBron James celebrating the NBA title. I am not a basketball fan, so the photo wasn’t what captured my attention. Rather, tt was the words under the photo: “The Promise Keeper.” That was all it took—I bought the magazine and went to Panera Bread, bought a coffee, and read the entire article. The gist of the article is that James left the Miami Heat and promised the Cavalier Nation that he was going to bring a basketball title to the city. The article praised him for delivering on that promise.
Promises. Nowadays, it seems like promises are made to be broken. We make promises and plan on keeping them, but only if it benefits us. Ssometimes I wonder if we assume this is how God interacts with us, too. Do we project our broken, human experience of broken promises onto the character of God?
That brings up the question that I have been thinking about: how do we clearly show our children that God never breaks His promises?
Throughout the Bible, we are told that God is the ultimate promise-keeper. “God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?” (Numbers 23:19)
I need to be—and want to be—more intentional about sharing this truth with my girls. Because God is faithful, I know that He will always keeps His promises!
Here is how I am going to be more intentional.
- During devotions, whenever we read about God making a promise, I am going to point it out and then show how God kept that promise.
- When one of their friends breaks a promise, I am going to console them and then remind them that even though it is hurtful, we know that our God never breaks His promises.
- When we see a rainbow—which is fairly common in Florida—I am going to point it out and remind my girls that God is a promise keeper.
Although we have devotions with our girls every night, we are being more intentional with a morning daily devotional time that our girls can do before going to school in the morning. If you would like to see what that looks like, you may benefit from my 31 free daily devos for children. One of the themes that I stress often is that God is a promise keeper. We see it all throughout Scripture—God keeps His Word!
