It’s easy to make promises, especially when we’re in a good mood. Someone needs help or some encouragement and so we promise to do something to resolve the issue. Keeping promises consistently, however, is hard, extremely hard. And that is why when it comes time to actually carry through with what we said we’d do, we look for all sorts of ways to excuse ourselves from keeping the commitment.
The consequences of not keeping promises, though, can be devastating. Promise breakers destroy trust and trust is the glue which holds relationships together. It isn’t uncommon to hear people speak bitterly of an incident which took place 20 years earlier in which someone had let them down by not doing what they had promised. There is even a saying about breaking promises that goes like this:
“‘Promises are meant to be broken’ has broken so many
hearts.”
It might sound negative to say that broken promises are always going to be a part of life, but unfortunately it is true. The reason is we live in a broken world filled with people who are very far from being perfect (including you and me)! But that sense of pessimism leads us to Christmas. While the focus of this season is on Jesus Christ and his coming into this world as our Savior, the whole story is really a “kept promise”. You see, from the moment evil entered the world, God promised someone, a human being, who would reverse the consequences of that evil. Throughout the entire Old Testament this promise was repeated and amplified. In the coming of Christ, it was perfectly fulfilled.
If you’ve been the victim of broken promises or are dealing with the shame of being a promise breaker, join us for one of our weekend services. God is The Promise Keeper – all the time, in everything.
Weekend worship service times: Saturday: 6:00 pm – Sunday:
10:00 am
