Have you been disappointed when a friend or parent didn’t keep a promise? We have all experienced that disappointment and perhaps we have disappointed ourselves by failing to keep a promise. That never, ever, happens with God. There has never been a time when God didn’t keep one of his promises in the Bible. We must always look to whom the promises were given, but of all the promises in the scripture, many hundreds are ours to claim. What are some of those? Salvation (John 3:16; Romans 1:16-17); Comfort in hard times (II Corinthians 1:3-4); a new way of living (II Corinthians 5:17); peace (Philippians 4:6-7); abundant life (John 10:10); things will always work out (Romans 8:28) & Jesus is going to return (John 14:2-3). This is a very small list of things the Lord has promised.
The promise I want you to hold on to today is the promise that is found in Philippians 1:6. “Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:” The moment you trusted Christ, He began working in you. The Lord has a purpose and a plan for each of us. You can count on the Lord finishing that work. You may squirm and try to run, but for the genuine Christian, God never stops fashioning the vessel He intends you to be. One of the truly great men of God in the 20th century was J. Vernon McGee. He tells about his life and the one promise that became his life’s promise. I’ll paraphrase and condense for space’s sake. He was born in extreme poverty. During his childhood the family moved 24 times. As a little boy his father died. His early life was one that was dire to say the least. He got out of high school and was able to attend college. God had called him to preach, and he wanted to follow that calling. The day he graduated from college he went to his dorm room and sat on the edge of the bed, with diploma in hand, sad and dejected. Not having a dime to his name, he decided to hitchhike back to Nashville and try to find a job. A friend came into the room. J. Vernon said to him, “I’ve lost everything. God brought me up to this moment and I want to go to seminary, but I have no money. I’m going to try and get back to Nashville.” At that moment the dorm phone rang. It was for him. Two widowed ladies were on the other end of the line, and they wanted him to visit them. The two ladies had been nice to him and sent him a tie for his graduation. Bro. McGee knocked on the door, went into their home, and visited with those two widows. When he was leaving, each of them handed him an envelope. Once outside and out of sight, he opened the two envelopes. In each was a large check. The amounts were large enough to help him begin seminary. Over the next few years, his Sunday school class along with others would send money to help pay his tuition. The widows, according to J. Vernon, gave him something more than money that day. As he was leaving, the two ladies gave him the Bible verse I wrote earlier. “Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:” That became his favorite Bible verse. He would say that “God made good on His promise every day.” What a promise! If the Lord has called you to do a job, He will provide a way. The work of J. Vernon McGee still goes on today even though he died in 1988.