By
Rev. Juliet Schimpf
Rev. Juliet Schimpf is the Minister of
First Baptist Church in Perth, Ontario:
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LINK to CFRA broadcast of
Sunday, May 11th, 2014)
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Broadcast
Notes:
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'God is always With Me - I will Not Fear'
God’s Promises Part2
When we think of promises, I think we can all remember making a pinky promise, maybe with a classmate, or a neighbour, or a brother or sister. Can you remember when you made a promise, or when a promise was made to you, maybe by a parent, uncle or grandmother? I remember my grandmother promising to take me to the zoo. I looked forward to it all year and then the summer came and she took me to the Toronto Zoo.
The problem is often, when we
think about promises, we think about broken promises; we think about promises
that were not kept: in our childhood, at school, in our marriages. They haven’t been kept because we are faulty
as humans; we are not perfect.
My prayer is that today and this
entire series will minister to you in the brokenness of the promises that have
been shattered in your lives.
Let’s pray:
Heavenly Father, We thank you that you are a promise-keeper. We thank you
that you delight in promises; it’s what you do and you do it best.
Will you speak to us today and give us a fresh ‘Word of God’, and touch us
by your grace and your Spirit?
Fill us with hope this hour that we need not fear, for you are always with
us. Amen
I did a little research on what
famous people have said about promises.
Machiavelli: The promise given was a necessity of the past
and the word broken is a necessity of the present.
Napoleon Bonaparte: The best way to keep one’s word is not to
give it.
Norman Vincent Peale: Promises
are like crying babies in a theatre, they should be carried out at once.
Jonathan Swift: Promises and pie crusts are made to be
broken.
Jean Jacques Rousseau: Those that are most slow in making a promise
are the most faithful in the performance of it.
Dwight Moodie: God never made a promise that was too good to
be true.
Theology of the Promise
What’s fascinating about God is
that He’s a promiser by nature. What I
mean is that He promises as a natural extension of who He is. God is love, 1 John 4. Out of that love,
is a yearning for relationship and a yearning for intimacy. Out of that flows promise after promise.
Example
I dated Michael for a year and I
was very happy during that time. I
couldn’t wait to see him, date after date.
One night, he treated me to a
lovely dinner. After dinner, he
presented me with a promise, an engagement ring. He promised, by putting a ring upon my
finger, that he would marry me. This
promise was an extension of his love for me.
He put the ring on my finger, we drove home and I rolled down the window
and yelled out, “Michael Schimpf proposed to me!” I yelled it out to all of Ottawa. Michael said, “Shhhhhh!.”
I couldn’t contain it because I
was so overjoyed that I received a promise.
Fast forward a year, then we walk
down the aisle on our wedding day.
Again, Michael puts a ring on my finger.
This time it’s the wedding ring.
The wedding ring is a covenant, or a promise, that Michael will be
faithful to me. This ring was an
extension of his love for me.
Likewise, God is forever making
promises because He’s a promiser by nature.
Unlike humans, God always keeps His promises.
2 Types of Promises
God makes two types of
promises.
The first is conditional. For example, in Romans, if you repent and
believe upon Jesus Christ, then you shall be saved. The promise is conditional upon repentance
and belief.
Other promises of God are completely
unconditional. For example, in Genisis,
God’s promise to Abraham that He will make his descendants as numerous as the
stars. There are no strings attached, no
conditions at all.
Both conditional and
unconditional promises are in the Bible.
For whom are all these promises?
Promises are for believers in
Jesus Christ. We will learn, in the
coming weeks, all promises are in Jesus Christ, says the Word of God.
There is one promise that is for
the unbeliever. Like John 3:16 says, that God sent His only Son, whoever believes in Him
shall not perish, but shall receive eternal life. The promise is: come to God and He will adopt
you as a child, filling you with His Spirit and giving you access to all His
promises. But first, you must repent and
believe.
It’s not accurate to say that all
promises in the Bible are for anyone at any time. They are for God’s beloved children.
God keeps every single promise
because He is perfect and, as the Word teaches us, He cannot deny Himself. He tells us, “Don’t makes oaths because you
are frail, you are fallen.” However, God
can never deny himself, so He will swear by Himself.
How many promises are in the
Bible? One person estimates that there
are 3573 promises waiting for us to claim.
I want you to know that the greater the amount of promises you and I
claim, the deeper our faith.
There’s an intimate and direct
connection between promises and faith.
These are not meant to be glossed over as we read, they are meant
especially for you right now, today.
They have your name on them.
Sadly, many of us have stopped
claiming them. There is a poverty in
promise claiming. But, I want us to be
claiming them at this church.
Fear
I did research on fear and what I
discovered is astounding. I discovered
that 10%, of Americans suffer from a diagnosed phobia.
Top ten phobias:
1.
Acrophobia (fear of
heights)
2.
Claustrophobia (fear
of enclosed spaces)
3.
Nyctophobia (fear of
the dark)
4.
Ophidiophobia (fear
of snakes)
5.
Arachnophobia (fear
of spiders)
6.
Trypanophobia (fear
of injection of medical needles)
7.
Astraphobia (fear of
thunder and lightning)
8.
Nosophobia (fear of
having a disease)
9.
Mysophobia (fear of
germs)
10. Triskaidekaphobia (fear of #13)
I came across over 600 documented
phobias.
Fear is a very real thing.
Along comes God’s Word. In 2 Timothy, is declares “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but
of power, love and self-discipline.”
It is not God’s intent for us to be afraid of anything. We are not to be afraid of snakes, needles,
thunder, #13, #666, boogie men, Frankenstein, nor politicians. Nothing!
It doesn’t matter what you’re afraid of, it’s not God’s design.
God gives us this popular promise
to combat fear: “I will never leave you, nor forsake you.” Jesus said it to His
disciples before He ascended. This began
many centuries earlier, God declared it, first of all, to Joshua before he and
the Israelites entered the Promise Land.
They were scared. In Joshua 1,
God says, “Be strong and courageous. Do not fear, I am with you. I will never leave you, I will never forsake
you.”
The psalmist writes, “Thy commands are always with me.” It’s the same as saying, “You will never
leave me.” Another writes, “Where can I flee from Your Spirit? I can’t escape Him. If I go up to the heavens, He is there. If I go to the pits, He is there.” Translation: God is always with us.
At Christmas, in the book of
Matthew we have that a little baby was born and he was given the name Emmanuel,
God with us. He never leaves us, nor
forsakes us.
God is repeating this promise
over and over again so that you will not be afraid.
I don’t know what you’re facing,
but you’re not facing it alone. Perhaps
you’re recently widowed, God is with you.
Perhaps you’re facing medical tests, God is with you. Perhaps your spouse or relative has abandoned
you, God has never abandoned you.
Sometimes we think we have to do
something to make God stay with us. Have
you ever woken up and said, “I think God may have left me today?”
Example
I was on vacation with Michael.
I became a little slack in doing
my devotions. I honestly started to
think that God might not be with us on this vacation, I’m having too much
fun.
We then go snorkeling. Michael and I had an arrangement that we’d
snorkel together and then I would go take a shuttle bus to the top of the
mountain called Jade Mountain. He wasn’t
too interested, so I would go on the tour and come back.
We’re out in the ocean and I tell
him that I’ll be back in an hour. But,
for some reason, I just couldn’t leave him.
Something kept telling me, “Stay by his side.” He then looks up at me, not realizing that
there is blood running down from his nose in his mask. He’s not aware that blood is pouring out from
his nose.
First of all, these are shark
waters. Secondly, I was going to leave
him for about an hour. I’d hate to think
how light headed he would have gotten and, possibly, pass out. I told him he had blood flowing and he said,
“No I don’t.” The water was dissipating
it so fast, he couldn’t even see it.
We went back to shore together. I said, “Thank You, God. You were with us.”
Even though I didn’t do my
devotions, He was watching us.
Is it dependent on our devotions? No, it’s because God puts within us His Holy Spirit when we are saved. This is why He can never leave us nor forsake us. Christ lives within us.
It gets a bit more complicated in
daily living. People ask, “If God is
always with me, can I do whatever I want?”
That’s not how it works.
This is how a promise works. James McDonald’s definition: “A promise is the assurance that God gives His people so that they can walk by faith while they wait for Him to work.” This means that today I believe and tomorrow I receive. However, the distance between today and tomorrow we do not know. We don’t know how long we’re going to have to walk by faith to receive that promise. But, walk by faith we must.
While we walk by faith, sometimes we can do things that will, indeed, turn God’s face slightly away from us. I want to bring you the whole counsel of God. It’s not accurate to teach that God is with you, go live and let live.
There are four different conditions under which God will slightly turn His face away and not directly with you:
1.
Pride. If you allow pride to come into your life,
there’s a problem. Psalm 138:6 says “The Lord regards the lowly. But the haughty, He knows from afar.” He will distance Himself from the proud. If you have pride, it needs to be eliminated
so that you can walk closely with God.
2.
Being worldly. James 4 says, “Do you not know the friendship with the world is
enmity with God. Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes
himself an enemy of God.”
Translation: You cannot have your cake and eat it too. If you want to walk intimately with God, you
cannot simultaneously be a friend of the world and crave after what it craves
after.
3.
Rebellion. Isaiah
says, “Why
will you continue to rebel? When you
spread out your hands in prayer, I hide My eyes from you. Even when you offer many prayers, I am not
listening.” It’s not
accurate to say that God hears all prayers.
If you are in rebellion, He is not listening. First, repent of your sin and then He will
draw near to you and walk with you.
Rebellion works against walking with God.
4.
Sin. Psalm
66 says, “If
I regard wickedness in my heart, the Lord will not hear.” It doesn’t matter how many times you pray, if
there is wickedness in your heart, the Lord will not hear.
In my journey, at age 24, I
rebelled. I decided, instead of
following Jesus, to follow after a bad cat from South Africa. In the moment, when I chose to go with him,
I saw, in a vision, Jesus walking away in the park. Does that mean He abandoned me? No, He has not abandoned us; our salvation is
sure. Jesus walked away and would allow
me to suffer the consequences of my poor choices.
Throughout all of it, He was at
work. Romans 8 says, “We know that God causes all things to work
together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to
His purpose.” Jesus
walked away, but He was in the background working all things out for my
good. He led me to a place, eight months
later, where I fell on my knees and repented.
I gave my life back to Christ. He
never abandoned me.
I want you to take encouragement today. You are not alone, God is always with you. You have nothing to fear, nothing to dread.
Will you join with me in prayer?
Our gracious Heavenly Father, We thank you that you are always with us.
You never leave us and you never forsake us. That’s a promise you first gave to
Joshua and then, through your own son, Jesus Christ.
I pray for the listener today who has been feeling lonely and alone. And,
Lord, I pray that you will just remind them that they are never alone. Christ
lives in them, Christ lives in us, the “hope of glory” says the book of Colossians.
I pray, Lord, for the listener who has been afraid. I pray that they would
fear not, for God is always with them and God is in control. And, God, you give
us not a spirit of timidity and fear, but of power and love and self control.
God, we thank you that you are always with us. Bless us this day, and
receive all the glory, honour and praise. Amen.
Thanks be to God!
Rev. Juliet Schimpf
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To listen to
the above broadcast, click on the following link:
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