2344) Did my title for this “minute” surprise you? I can assure you I was not writing it as clickbait.

How many times have we read a promise from God and wondered, is he really keeping his promises?

How about Matthew 7:7–Ask and it will be given you? And you’ve asked and asked for a loved one to be healed and they die?

How about Isaiah 26:3–You will keep us in perfect peace? And there’s so much turmoil in your world, peace is a foreign word?

How about Psalm 91:3–Surely he will save you from the fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence and the conflict you’re facing rages on?

If I’m honest, I have thrown words at God such as,  you don’t keep your promises. You only seem to answer the prayers of people more godly than me. You tell me to ask and then, you don’t give it.

God can take my honesty, and, quite frankly, he would rather hear this and not some phony prayer I feel may manipulate God into thinking I’m holier than I am, and then he will do what he promises for me.

All of these things are honest and harbor deep feelings of anguish. So, how do I believe God does keep his promises?

The hard answer is, I can’t. I do believe God keeps his promises, but I’m unsure of how to respond when what I see seems to indicate God doesn’t.

The two verses that help me with this conflict is Isaiah 55:8-9. The verse reads: For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. (NIV)

My takeaway from these verses is God does keep his promises, but not necessarily in the way we are expecting. Does this make the internal conflict easier?

I don’t think so, but when situations happen and we don’t understand how God is keeping his promises, we can stand on the words written by Isaiah.