What if your words ended up in a frame on the wall every time you made a promise? When a top United States diplomat recently took a new post in Europe, he took something important with him: a framed letter. The letter pledged support and friendship from the United States to the country he would be serving. It would be a visual reminder to himself and all the people he met with that he—and the government he served—meant to keep that promise.
We all make a lot of promises—at work, at home, at church, and even to ourselves! We make big promises and small promises. I promise myself I’ll eat fewer cookies (starting tomorrow). I promise to look over a friend’s manuscript and help her get it ready for publication. My husband and I pledge to tithe a certain amount of money each year to our church and other charitable organizations. Twenty-seven years ago, we vowed that we would love, honor, and cherish each other.
Our kids make promises, too. How many times have we heard that they’ll clean their room—tomorrow? Chances are good that they’ll keep that promise about as well as I’ll keep my promise to eat fewer cookies! Every day at school where I work, I hear kids promise their teachers that they’ll be “respectful, responsible, and safe.” Every day, I also see and hear some kids act as if they’ve never even heard of such a promise.
How good is our word? What if our pledges and promises were framed and placed on a wall for everyone to see? What if God framed all of the promises we made, big or small, and hung them on his wall?
The reality is that God does take our word—our promises—seriously. Numbers 30:2 says, “Moses said to the heads of the tribes of Israel: ‘This is what the Lord commands: When a man makes a vow to the Lord or takes an oath to obligate himself by a pledge, he must not break his word but must do everything he said.’”
God takes His own word very seriously. In John 17:17, Jesus says that God’s word is truth. In Matthew 4:4, he says that ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” The word of God is the source of life itself! The times in my life when I have felt closest to God were times when I took God at his word and found him abundantly faithful to his own promises. It’s his faithfulness that has inspired me to write books and posts to his glory over the past two decades!
If you are looking for a way to share God’s promises with your children, a new book, Promises of God Storybook Bible: The Story of God’s Unstoppable Love by Jennifer Lyell (for ages 4-8), looks like a beautiful new way to do just that. It was published in October by B&H Publishing.
May we, through our example to our children, also demonstrate that our word is something that we could proudly hang on a wall for all to see.