Breaking His Promise

Did God break His promise to Israel concerning how long He would continue to answer them when they prayed? The answer of course must be … NO! God cannot break any promise He makes.

Was answering prayer part of His covenant with Israel, or was His covenant only to bless Abraham's seed and make him the father of a great nation?

The following are just a few of the promises I found that God made with Israel concerning answering prayer.

Isaiah 30:19 … "At the sound of your cry; when He hears it, He will answer you."
Isaiah 58:9 … "Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer …"
Jeremiah 33:3 … "Call to Me and I will answer you …"
Psalm 89:34 … "My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips."

The only time I can find when God didn't answer His people when they prayed, was when He placed the nation of Israel under judgment.

I have found these scriptures in reference to God not answering …

Proverbs 1:28 … "Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer …"
Isaiah 1:15 … "when ye make many prayers, I will not hear …"
Jeremiah 11:11 … "they shall cry unto me, I will not hearken unto them."
Ezekiel 8:18 … "though they cry in mine ears with a loud voice, yet will I not hear them."
Micah 3:4 … "Then shall they cry unto the LORD, but he will not hear them …"

It has been said that for the last 400 years before Jesus was born; the period of time between Malachi and Matthew … God never spoke to Israel. As far as I can tell He still doesn't yet today, except through the Gospel.

I'm beginning to wonder about His dealings with America. Is this Christian nation at the same place spiritually that Israel was just before Jesus was born?

Many times when we pray, nothing happens, God stays silent, leaving us to operate totally … by faith, instead of actually seeing Him answer in the physical, natural world. It's as if He wants us to keep our eyes on Jesus and … trust Him. Huh??? Are you serious???

In the book "Disappointment with God," Phillip Yancey writes … "The kind of faith God values seems to develop best when everything fuzzes over, when God stays silent, when the fog rolls in."

Kind of like many times now. But …

We now have a new and better covenant today called grace and I'm glad because the other one under works … we couldn't keep. This new one will work because of Jesus and Him alone, not because of anything we have done or will do.

Hebrews 8:6-8 … "But now hath he (Jesus) obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second. For finding fault with them, he saith, (Jeremiah 31:31) Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel …"

It's all God's grace and mercy. The old covenant didn't work out, but this new one will. Jesus has already said … "It is finished" … and I'm standing on that.

Matthew 11:13 … "For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John" … meaning that John the Baptist introduced a new dispensation; the old one, under the prophets and the Law was fulfilled and closed when he preached that the kingdom of heaven was at hand.

Am I wrong about God promising to answer the Jews when they called? Were their promises done away with and made void when the blood of Jesus ran down the cross He was nailed to? Was God's promise to Abraham only about his seed becoming a great nation? Was the covenant and God's promises two separate things?

On that note … in Genesis 21:18, God also promised Hagar that Ishmael would become a great nation and look how that is turning out. Ugh!!! God kept that promise. Of course my natural response in the flesh is … too bad.

What I am trying to say is this. If God, 400 years before Jesus came the 1st time, stopped speaking to His people and no longer honored His promise to answer them … if there even was a promise … could not God do the same today with His church just before the 2nd coming of Jesus? My question is not will He, but could He stop speaking to us or answering prayer in the same way that He did with Israel?

Jesus did ask the question … "will faith be found" on earth when He returns?

Yes, I know God is no longer angry at anyone. He poured out His wrath, all of it upon Jesus; but yet sin still has its own reward does it not? I don't believe He will ever leave us or forsake us … but could He not stay silent … if He so chooses?

He is sovereign you know; and we really have no idea what He is going to do next.


Comments welcome.

My Personal Opinions about God

In one of my previous postings entitled … "Who God Really Is" … I pointed out four or five important things about God's nature that makes Him who He is. I guess you could say this discourse or dissertation is an extended elaboration in greater detail of who God is in four doctrinal categories.

This body of work is written in the old masters style, in that I have tried to copy several other … "Christian Confessions of Faith in Jesus Christ." These are not only my personal opinions from the Holy Scriptures, but also many time honored doctrines about God from hundreds of Bible scholars throughout many hundreds of years.

I would like to start with … God Himself.

There is but one living and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, (total and all-embracing, having no limits or boundaries) a spirit, invisible, without body or parts, immutable (not subject to change) immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, holy, free, absolute, working all things according to the counsel of His own immutable and righteous will; most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin.

God has all life, glory and goodness in and of Himself and is all-sufficient in and of Himself, not standing in need of anything or any creature which He has made. He is the cause of all being, of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things; and has sovereign dominion (self-governing, supreme, authority and power) over them, for them, or with them, in whatsoever He pleases.

In His sight all things are open, naked and manifest (revealed); His knowledge is infinite (having no limits in time, space, extent or magnitude), infallible (incapable of failure or error), and independent (free from external control); so as nothing to Him is uncertain or contingent on circumstances. He is most holy in all His counsels, in all His works, and in all His commands. To him is due from angels, men and every creature, whatever worship, service, or obedience He is pleased to require of them.

Second … God's Providence.

God, the Creator of all things, upholds, directs, disposes, and governs … all … creatures, actions, and things, from the greatest event to the least, by His wise and holy providence, according to His infallible foreknowledge, and the free and immutable counsel of His own will, goodness, grace and mercy … forever.

All things come to pass immutably and infallibly according to the foreknowledge and decree of God … the first cause; yet, by the same providence, He has also ordained them to fall away, change or dissolve according to the nature of … second causes; either by necessity, freely or contingently (determined by conditions or circumstances).

God, in His providence, makes use of means; yet is free to work within those means, outside those means or against those means, at His pleasure. He has a right to give whatever He so chooses, in whatever proportions, at whatever times, and with whatever conditions He pleases. He may therefore give or withhold any or all of His blessings, as He pleases.

The almighty power, unsearchable wisdom, infinite goodness and providence of God, becomes clearly apparent with the evidence that even before the first sin and continuing to all other sins of men; by what looks like permission to sin by giving man a free will that might lead to sin … yet even so, the sinfulness proceeds only from the creature, and not from God; who being most holy and righteous, neither is nor can be the author or approver of sin.

God may for a season lead His own children into various trials to test the integrity and honesty of their own hearts; to help them discover any strongholds of sin hidden in their hearts so they may be humbled; and to bring them to a closer and constant dependence on Him for their support and care, and to make them more watchful against that sin.

As for unrepentant, sinful and ungodly men, God not only withholds His grace, but exposes them to their own lusts and gives them over to their moral perversions, the temptations of the world and the power of Satan; whereby it comes to pass that they harden themselves under the same means which God uses for the softening of others.

Third … God's Eternal Decree.

God, from all eternity, by the counsel of His own will, freely ordains whatsoever comes to pass; but yet … God is not the author of sin; but has decreed the evil in nature and its second causes be established as a result of sin.

Although God knows what will come to pass in all future conditions; He has not decreed any such thing because He foresaw it in the future, as that which would come to pass, upon such conditions. Those that choose life have been chosen out of His free grace and mercy alone, without any foresight of faith, good works or any other thing in the creature, such as conditions or causes moving God to do so.

As God has chosen those in Christ only through His mercy and grace, He has also foreordained all the means to that end. Therefore they, who are redeemed by Christ, are called to faith in Christ only by the Holy Spirit.

As to mankind in general; God extends or withholds His grace and mercy as He pleases in accordance with His will and sovereign power over His creatures. By doing so He ordains them to honor or dishonor in the same manner as seems good to the potter over the clay.

And last … Free Will.

God has endued the will of man with a natural liberty and freedom of choice that is not predisposed or made susceptible to good or evil.

Man, in his state of innocence, had the freedom of choice and the power to will, to do that which was good and pleasing to God; but yet also mutable (able to change) so that he might fall from that innocence.

Man, by his fall into a state of sin, lost all ability to will himself by nature to spiritual good; so as a natural man, being altogether adverse to that spiritual good, being dead in sin, is not able by his own strength to convert himself or to save himself from that sin.

When God converts such a man and translates him into the state of grace, He frees him from his natural bondage under sin and by His grace alone, enables him freely to will and do that which is spiritually good; yet because of his remaining fleshly nature, man does not perfectly, nor only … will that which is good … but also that which is evil.

And so we are today.


Comments welcome.

If My People

Look at the following verse; I'm sure you know it. I always thought this verse was only promised to the Jewish nation at the time Solomon completed the building of the Jewish temple.

2nd Chronicles 7:14 … "If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land."

Of course I always add this disclaimer to it … "The Jews didn't, so God didn't."

Instead God fulfilled the following two verses (19 & 20) that He had warned Solomon about …

"But if ye turn away, and forsake my statutes and my commandments, which I have set before you, and shall go and serve other gods, and worship them; Then will I pluck them up by the roots out of my land which I have given them … "

And is it not true that God arranged or caused the Jewish nation to be scattered all over the known world? Evidently God fulfilled the warning He gave and removed them from the land of promise because they didn't repent.

The Scripture goes on and says in verses 21 & 22, people will ask … "Why hath the LORD done thus unto this land, and unto this house? And it shall be answered, Because they forsook the LORD God of their fathers … therefore hath he brought all this evil upon them."

So now, let me ask this question. Can 2nd Chronicles 7:14 be taken as a promise for believers today when it says … "If my people, which are called by my name" … mean specifically Christians?

That leads me to this question … when were the Jews ever called by His name?

What is the Jewish name of the personal God of Israel? Yahweh. All other names such as Elohim (God), El (mighty one), El Shaddai (almighty God), Adonai (master), El Elyon (most high God), Avinu (our Father), etc. are not names but titles, highlighting the different aspects of Yahweh and the various roles which He has.

Were the Jews ever called … "Yahweh-ions or Adonai-ions?" No … they were called Jews, Israelites or Hebrews. They were never called by His name.

Do you see where I'm going? The Jews were never called by His name … Yahweh … but believers in Jesus, God's Son, who is the Christ, are called by His name. We are called … Christians because of that name and title.

God is the God of the whole earth, of the Gentiles as well as of the Jews. The Gospel was spread among Jews and Gentiles; and when Jews were converted they were also called Christians the same as the Gentiles.

The Jews understand the meaning of "If my people" to be only the people of Israel, God's chosen people … as the Hebrew Bible reads slightly different … "upon whom his name is called" … meaning the LORD or Yahweh. But as history shows, the promise of 2nd Chronicles 7:14 was ignored and came and went. The Jews were removed.

Let me return to my question. Can 2nd Chronicles 7:14 be taken as a promise for believers today? Are we not, because of Christ, God's people today? If so … will the same thing happen to us … that happened to the Jews?

I'm speaking of God's warning that came with the promise … not to be plucked up by the roots and removed … but the other one; the question they asked after God brought judgment.

"Why hath the LORD done thus unto this land, and unto this house? And it shall be answered, Because they forsook the LORD God of their fathers … therefore hath he brought all this evil upon them."

Stop and take a good look at this land … America. Do you remember how it became a nation? A free nation … a Christian nation.

America's founding fathers formed this land to be governed by the principles found in the Bible. The founding fathers were believers in Jesus Christ. They believed that this land we call America, was preordained by the sovereignty of God to be … "a Christian nation."

What worries me, if I can say it that way … is if 2nd Chronicles 7:14 can still be claimed as a promise for America today … and if it can, then doesn't that mean the warning that God gave Israel is also given to us as well?

Have we as a nation done exactly what Israel did? "They forsook the LORD God of their fathers." Have we?

Has America forsaken the God of our founding fathers? And if we have … will our children ask the very same question … "Why has the Lord done this unto this land?"

And it shall be answered, "Because they forsook the God of their founding fathers … therefore He brought all this evil upon them." You reap what you sow.

May God have mercy upon America; because … I have grandchildren.


Comments welcome.

Who God Really Is

"Who is God really?" … is a question asked by many different people many times. If I change the order of the arrangement of these four words they change from a question to this partial statement … "who God really is." I feel challenged within myself to try and define who God really is by answering the first question, who is God really according to how He is revealed to us, in and thru the Holy Scriptures.

How can anyone write about God and do justice? If every descriptive word known to man was used in the most elegant fashion possible, which I can't do, we still wouldn't have a true and accurate picture of … "who God really is." It may take eternity with Him to find that out.

I'm not a writer by any sense of the word and I'm not a Bible expert or theologian. I do know just a little of the Word and have just enough writing ability to become dangerous with what I write; hopefully this won't be one of those times.

So, with this in mind, overlook the feeble effort I am making as I attempt to do just this … using words to do justice to God and paint you an accurate picture at the same time of "who God really is" accordingly as seen thru my heart.

What I am going to write about is something I feel God wants me to do. Who it's for, I'm not sure of … it might be just for me … I write sometimes to put a voice to the things in my spirit. It helps.

I should probably start by stating that "God is." If you don't believe this truth, you might as well stop reading right now. Everything I am going to write starts with this fact … "God is."

God was before all things … and will still consist, and quite well I might add, even after, (if there ever is) an end someday to eternity. God was before us and will be after us. God was not created. God is not an accident. God did not just suddenly appear from a big bang in the universe. That's what makes Him God … He just is.

To quote God Himself, He said … "I Am." Period. No matter what … God will still be able to say … "I Am." He is the only "anything" that always was and always will be. It's found in Exodus 3:14 … "And God said to Moses, I AM that I AM…"

What is God saying by this statement … "I Am."

It is difficult for me to put an exact meaning to the words but they seem intended to point out the eternal and self-existence of God. He needs no help from anyone, He depends upon no one and He is "what" He is … all by Himself.

"I am that I am," to me means, "I am who I am and what I am, and I will be what I will be." In other words … "I'm here, now deal with it."

He is not only eternal but unchangeable; He is always the same … yesterday, today, and forever; He will be what He will be, and what He is.

Malachi 3:6 … "For I am the LORD, I change not …"

Change means … to be different; usually by becoming less or more, to get better or worse. In the law of physics … change happens from order to disorder, perfection to imperfection. God cannot change nor needs to change for He is total, complete and perfect in every way. How can He improve? What area, what trait, what characteristic, what part of His nature needs to improve? Does He need to improve in power, love, knowledge, size, faith, goodness, mercy or grace? Is there anything about Him that needs to change?

God is unchangeable. I like the way Graham Cooke says it …

"You never know what God is going to do next; but you always know … what He is going to be like. He is consistent in His nature. He will never change His heart toward you no matter what you do. He cannot be anything other than what He is."

"God is faithful" … 1st Corinthians 1:9. (Amplified Bible)

When you know that your future, your health and your life depends totally on God's ability and not yours … then you can willingly place all these things into the hands of a God who loves you, cares for you and is faithfully committed to you.

God is love …

1st John 3:1 … "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us …"

Love is more than just a feeling, and it's not an emotion. Love is a matter of your will; you choose to give your love to another person. If you fall in love, you can fall out of love. Feelings can change, love should not. God's love never will.

Love is a force that can move people to give. Love moved God to give. Ask yourself if you would be willing to turn over your child to take the punishment … a death sentence … for someone else, a truly guilty law breaker. I'm sure your answer is the same as mine … no, I would not give my child's life for anyone. But most of us … in a heart beat … would be willing to give our own life to save our children.

How much love did it take for God the Father, to give His only begotten Son a death sentence for you? Can we measure God's love? Can we understand God's love? Can we describe God's love? I really don't think so.

1st John 4:16 … "we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love …"

Speaking of His love brings back to mind my favorite worship song, a live recording by the group "Hillsong" entitled … "The One Who Saves." The chorus line is sung over and over and declares perhaps the greatest truth about God there is … "His love endures … Forever His love endures … Forever His love endures … Forever and ever … Jesus."

Jesus "is" the love of God and His love endures ... forever.

The truth is … the fact that Jesus came is proof of God's love for us.

John 3:16 … "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son …"

It is the nature of God … to redeem a weak, fallen and sinful people. Why does He do that? Because He loves you.

I love how Graham Cooke puts it … may I quote him again?

"You need to understand there is nothing you can do to make Him love you more. There is also nothing you can do to make Him love you less. He loves you because that is what He is like. It is His nature to love. His love is unchanging. You will always be loved.

He won't love you any better when you become better. And even if you have no plans to become better, He will still love you as you are. Even if you don't change, He will still love you with His whole heart because that's His nature. His love is unchanging. He loves you right now, this very moment … as you are. He can't help Himself, that's who He is … God is love."

I have only scratched the surface describing "who God really is" as seen through my heart. But I feel I have covered some of the most important doctrinal points about God.

But I need to remind you of one more thing … what God looks like. God, or should I say, "God the Father," is a Spirit and as a spirit being is not visible and cannot be seen with the natural eyes.

If you want to see what God looks like … then look at Jesus who is the visible face of God; the very image and nature of the invisible God, the express image of His person, and is such a likeness, that it can be said that … "He who has seen the one has seen the other."

Colossians 1:15 … "He (Jesus) is the exact likeness of the unseen God, the visible representation of the invisible …"

The image that is seen is of the Son of God … Jesus. He is the perfect and complete image of His Father; more than just a visible likeness; this image includes the same nature as His Father but with His own personality and distinction as the Son.

Hebrews 1:3 … "He is the sole expression of the glory of God, and He is the perfect imprint and the very image of God's nature …"

I don't teach "Jesus Only" as some do. But, I do believe that the Trinity of God … Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all ONE. No, I can't explain it … but that doesn't mean it's not true. But what I do believe is this …

Who is the creator? Jesus. Who is the Lamb of God? Jesus. Who died on the cross? Jesus. Who is the Healer? Jesus. Who is seated on the Mercy Seat? Jesus. Who is coming back for His church? Jesus. Who has been given all power both in Heaven and in Earth? Jesus. Who is the same yesterday, today and forever? Jesus. Who ever lives to make intercession for you? Jesus. Who is Lord? Jesus.

Do I see only "Jesus" most of the time? Yes … I admit I do.

Do you want to know who God really is? Do you want to know what God is really like? Then look at Jesus because that's … who God really is.


Comments welcome.