There is a difference between a contract and a promise. A contract is a legal way of forcing the participants into performing certain deeds or obligations. Sometimes they are necessary for the smooth functioning of society. However, a contract is no good at endearing one human to another.
Imagine this: In June, we get our families together and sign contracts for next December’s Christmas presents, stating price ranges, quantity of items, and even the colors of the wrapping paper. That tarnishes some of the glamor, doesn’t it?
Promises are a way of voluntarily bonding people together, such as the pinky promise kept between kids for all their lives, or birthdays celebrated, with an unspoken promise to remember every year. There are a hundred things we never write contracts for, yet people know we will do them. Dinner on the table. Beds made. Gas in the car. Being ready for church on Sunday. Lawnwork. TV shows recorded. That special coffee. Donuts, the cream-filled kind.
We remember, and we have become Velcro, our loops and their hooks, interlinked, bonded tightly, and almost impossible to tear apart. The more promises we keep the more hooks and loops we’ve created, and the tighter we are bound.
Yet, what happens when the promises don’t come? When we depend on someone, and they don’t follow through?
If there’s enough Velcro, just a few loops coming unhooked will not weaken the relationship. We will forgive, let it slide, and assume there is a valid reason something did not get done.
Yet, what happens when the promises still don’t come? When the dinner is missing for the fourth night in a row? The fifth? The tenth? When the TV show never gets recorded, and we always get chocolate instead of cream-filled?
The loops come unhooked.
There was a four hundred year break between the Old and New Testaments. During this time, the promises spoken of by Haggai and Zechariah had not come true, and the loops between the people of God and the Almighty had come undone. The people became lax and let themselves slip away from God.
Jesus was aware of this problem.
He and the disciples lived at a difficult time. To the Jews, Jesus was the Messiah, come to return the glory of past days to the Jewish people. Even the disciples believed his glory was a material one.
Then, in Chapter 6 of the Gospel of John, it seemed to many of Jesus’ disciples that the world had conspired against them. Where were the promises they had forsaken their livelihoods and families to claim?
John 6:66 tells us that for many of the disciples, the Velcro had come completely free, because the promises were not what they had expected them to be. They felt God’s promises weren’t being kept, and they abandoned Jesus.
In John 6:67-69, Jesus asks the remaining disciples, “Will you also go away?”
Simon Peter’s response was what ours should be: “To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
That is our only possible answer. To whom shall we go? There is no other friend upon whom we can depend.
When we feel the promises of God have evaporated into effervescent mists in the night, we cannot let the Velcro come undone. God does not work on contracts and obligations. He works on pinky promises, dinner on the table, and gas in the car. He remembers our special coffee, and he never forgets we appreciate the cream-filled kind.
God knows we need Velcro. He is fully aware that his promises kept are what keep us tightly bound to him.
He wants us to remind him of his promises. Psalm 119:49 gives us David’s words:
“Remember your words to me, for in them, I have found hope.”
In modern day terms, David swiped God’s promises with a highlighter so they would stand out to God.
When we “highlight” God’s promises to us, it is not because he has forgotten and needs to be reminded. It is to remind us that the Velcro is still there, and all we need to do is press it tightly together once again.
God’s promises are true. When we cling to them tightly, we will never fall away from him.
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