God Keeps His Promises… Even When You Don’t Know He’s Doing So
By Michael Kelley
God keeps His promises. True enough, He may not keep them in the manner or the timing that’s most convenient or comfortable to us, but He keeps them nevertheless:
“Know that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps his gracious covenant loyalty for a thousand generations with those who love him and keep his commands” (Deut. 7:9).
When it feels like He’s silent, He’s still keeping His promises.
When it feels like He’s absent, He’s still keeping His promises.
When it feels like He’s forgotten, He’s still keeping His promises.
Very often, though, we don’t really see the evidence of His faithfulness until it’s already happened. God keeps His promises even when we don’t know He’s doing it. Here’s one example:
Let’s say you are walking through a prolonged and difficult season. Perhaps it’s the illness of a loved one or a long time of being without work. Every day you wake up and you pray for some kind of movement - some alteration in your circumstances, and every day seems like the day before. Life becomes a slog, and it takes everything you have just to get up in the morning and process through the same thing you walked through yesterday.
Day after day, week after week, and even month after month the pattern continues. Wake up, feel the pain of the situation, pray, go to sleep. Wash, rinse, repeat. Over and over again. But eventually that period comes to an end. It likely doesn’t come to an end with an exclamation point - not some resounding climactic moment, but rather it just… ends. And life goes on.
Then some years later, you look back on that period. And you realize, in retrospect, just how much the Lord was doing in that time when He felt so unmoved and absent. He was keeping His promises, though He was doing so slowly. Gradually. Sometimes silently.
He has promised, for example, that “all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28). You remember during that season when you were so uncomfortable that you couldn’t see how He was keeping this promise. But in retrospect you realize the difference between “comfort” and “good.” God promised to work all things for the latter, but never for the former.
And now you can see - you can see how that painful season did work for the good. It formed you. Shaped you. Made your heart tender and receptive. It made you more like Jesus. He kept His promise, even though you didn’t know He was doing so.
Christian, you can be confident today even if your circumstances don’t change. Even if tomorrow is pretty much exactly how today is. Even if you are in a season of slogging your way through life. God is still keeping His promises… but you may only how He’s doing so when you look backwards.
Michael Kelley is a husband, father of three, author, and speaker from Nashville, TN. His latest book is a year-long family devotional guide called The Whole Story for the Whole Family. Find his personal blog at michaelkelley.co.
