Is this really God’s promise?
God promises to be faithful to his promises, but how can we really know what promises are from God to us...personally?
Earlier this year, I shared on my social media feeds this scripture:
”…Deep in your hearts you know that every promise of the Lord your God has come true. Not a single one has failed!“ -Joshua 23:14 NLT
Then I added,
“You can rest in the promises of God. He is ALWAYS faithful to his word. ALWAYS.”
This is true, but I need to put into context what a promise of God is and what it means for God to keep those promises. So for the next few weeks, I’ll use this newsletter to explore how to know a promise of God, what it looks like for God’s promises to come to pass, and what our posture should be concerning God’s promises.
To do this, I’ve gone back into the vaults of my writing and speaking for the past several years. What you will read is a mix of those thoughts updated and reformatted. This post includes thoughts from a social media post I made during the spring and summer of 2020. I titled those posts, “3 Minutes of Hope.”
Promises and Dreams
A common question I hear when it comes to God’s promises is this:
“How do I know what a promise from God looks like?”
Let me answer by starting in the book of Genesis. One of the characters in Genesis is a man named Joseph. Joseph was 2nd of twelve sons of Jacob. He should have been one of the lowest in the family pecking order, and Joseph wasn’t so well-liked among his brothers. However, Joseph’s father favored Joseph above the rest.
Rather than playing off the favoritism, Joseph played it up. As an example, Joseph had a dream — a dream from God — that his brothers would one day bow down to him! Joseph doubles down on this prideful news by sharing a second, similar dream. Joseph isn’t just sharing a bit of news with his family, he is rubbing it in their faces.
Putting Joseph’s arrogance aside for a moment, let’s focus on his dream.
Joseph had a dream of rising to power. Joseph didn’t fully understand what this meant (Joseph would rise to be the second most powerful person in Egypt, which was the most powerful nation in the world). Joseph didn’t understand his dream in full, but he knew God had something great for him.
Joseph’s dream was a promise from God.
Promises from God
In general, there are two types of promises from God:
Promises for everyone. You can find these in Scripture, and I encourage you to look them up. These promises are great reminders of the good things God has in store for those who love and serve Him. These are two examples of lists of promises to start with - HERE and HERE.
Promises for you specifically. As in the case of Joseph, a dream is often a promise from God. Many times we mislabel God’s promises as personal dreams, but this downplays God’s role in our lives.
If you have one of those dreams that you just can’t shake — I’m talking about something in your head and heart for weeks, months, years, or even decades — this is very possibly a promise from God.
If you have that kind of dream, here are three pieces of wisdom for what God has placed in your heart.
Test your dream.
There are two parts to testing a dream:
Take it to other people.
Scripture
Scripture is a great mirror to our souls. It displays what lurks within us.
This passage in Luke is a good example of this mirror to test your dream:
“He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” -Luke 10:27
Does your dream honor God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind? Does your dream honor and care for your neighbor?
If you can’t answer yes to both of those questions, then your dream probably isn’t a promise from God.
People
Talking with people in your life who know you well is another great test for your dream. Pick people who believe in you but will also be honest and fair. These are people who know your strengths and weaknesses and can objectively speak to what you see for yourself.
Joseph had this moment early on in his process of exploring his dreams from God. After he’s boasted to his brothers about their eventual bowing down to him, his father confronts him:
“When he told his father as well as his brothers, his father rebuked him and said, “What is this dream you had? Will your mother and I and your brothers actually come and bow down to the ground before you?” His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind.” -Genesis 37:10-11
We don’t know the exact interaction based on these three lines of scripture, but it seems as if Jacob is scolding Joseph’s attitude more than his dream. We see Jacob held onto the core of the dream but dismissed Joseph’s arrogance.
So Jacob spoke into Joseph’s dreams, but for Joseph to be ready for God’s promises it meant going on a journey of transformation.
The journey matters.
Before you can step into the promise God has for you, you must be shaped into the kind of person who is ready for that promise. God uses our waiting, our journey, from promise to reality to shape us.
This was Joesph’s issue. His heart was far behind his natural ability to fulfill God’s purpose, so God took him on a journey.
God refining people through a journey is a common theme in Scripture. You see the entire nation of Israel wander the wilderness for 40 years. Elijah walks 40 days and 40 nights to the Mountain of God. Jesus himself goes on a 40-day fast in the wilderness.
God uses the journey of life to refine and test us. This is because your heart and your relationship to God are the most important things to him. He is willing to allow you to walk through difficult times and places to see your heart transformed and your relationship grow closer to him.
For Joseph, this meant begin sold into slavery by his brothers, being thrown into prison after being falsely accused of rape and being forgotten in that prison after he helped a servant of the king. Even worse, each time it seemed Joseph was being put in a place of hope and a future, it was painfully ripped away from him.
And then there was the waiting. Thirteen years Joseph waited in hopeless places. Waiting may be the most painful aspect of your journey because negative action can feel better than no action at all.
Through the heartache, Joseph’s pride is slowly stripped away until he humbly sees himself as nothing more than God’s servant. Joseph knows God.
Yet, the journey is not an end in itself, it is a means to get you to the place where you are ready to step into what has been promised to you. So, at the end of thirteen years, Joseph was transformed into a person who could step into the promises made to him as a young man.
God gives us dreams, but a promise isn’t just given. You must step into your promise.
Take possession of your promise.
After more than a decade of slavery and imprisonment, Joseph was given his chance for freedom and the fulfillment of his dream. Yet, it was Joesph who had to step into this promise. We see him do it in several ways.
Joseph interpreted the dream of the servant of the king, and he asked the man to remember him when he returned to the king’s court. Joseph advocated for his dream. Two years passed before the servant remembered Joseph, but Joseph didn’t enter the king’s presence bitter or distracted. Joseph humbly served Pharaoh.
Stepping into a promise is another theme of scripture. The nation of Israel was “given” the Promised Land, but when they arrived at the edge of this land, they saw it was filled with giants. Their first response was to retreat in fear (leading to a 40-year wilderness journey). Given another opportunity, they boldly walked in and with God’s power, took possession of the land promised to their ancestor Abraham (Joseph’s great-grandfather).
The journey prepares you for the battle it will take to step into the promise of God. The journey isn’t easy, and neither will be the battle.
Taking possession of your promise won’t be easy, but it will be worth it. Anything of value has a lot of blood, sweat, and tears attached to it.
Last year, my older son was a senior in high school and my younger son was a freshman. After years of playing soccer, they had this one potential year of playing together. It was years of practice and games in the hot summer, cold winter, and rainy, windy seasons in between. It was years of driving and dropping off and picking up and buying uniforms and washing dirty socks.
When they walked on the field together for the first time, the meaning was deeper because of the difficult work it took for all of us to get there. And this pales in comparison to the big things that God has for each of us in the future.
What is your promise?
So in this first post about the promises of God, my question for you is simple.
What is your dream?
But maybe it isn’t that simple. You may have detached yourself from allowing yourself to dream. It’s possible you gave up because the journey was too hard. You may have quit because of the giants ahead of you.
Go back and dream again.
This is where the promises of God live. Test them with Scripture and trusted friends. Be willing to be hurt, be disappointed, and go on a journey. Step into the hard work of slaying the dragons and giants ahead of you.
What is your promise?
Writing Playlist
I don’t know if we have the same taste in music, but here are some songs to explore. All the links go to Spotify. While writing this post, this is some of what I was listening to:
Firm Foundation (He’s Gonna Make a Way) - Maverick City
That Ain’t It - Zee, EGR, Miles Minnick
Chi Chi - Charlie Parker Quartet
Word of the Year
Last week I finished up a series of posts on creating, learning, and growing from your Word of the Year. If you would like a free PDF version of this information, it is free to all subscribers, and I’ll be sending it out in a few days.
If you are not a subscriber and would like a copy, you can subscribe here:
