God's Promises

"Trust in God's promises"

I've heard this repeated at church, in small group meetings, and at BSF. Christian friends will repeat this to me often. I know that God's Word is Truth and that whatever God says will surely happen. But when someone tells me to trust in God's promises, to put my faith in God's promise, to remember God's promises when going through difficult trials, I have to ask myself -- do i even know what God's promises are? Can I pull out Scripture from my memory to help remind me? Or do i carry around vague fuzzy ideas of what I think God's Word says somewhere?

I get a bit concerned when I cannot remember Scripture because when I try to remember a verse from my fuzzy memory, I find that I tend to add words or ideas or concepts to that verse. It reminds me of Eve's response in the garden when the serpent asked her why she could not eat from the tree. She said that God had said "You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die." Gen 3:3 God hadn't said anything about not touching the tree. Eve added that herself. It led her into some trouble with the serpent. And isn't it the same story with the Pharisees? Who took the laws given to Moses from God and then added to those laws so that they had become legalistic and religious, forgetting the reasons for why those laws where placed there in the first place?

So one of my intentions this year is that I would search for God's promises during my daily readings of the Bible. And that I would write out these promises in my journal and bury them in my heart. So that when someone tells me to trust in God's promises, I'll know exactly which ones to trust in.