GENESIS 21:1 – The Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised.

THEME OF THE DAY. GOD’S MEANS OF ASSURANCE. Christians fight doubts. Christians feel the assaults upon their faith. We encounter fiery darts of unbelief hurled at us from the devil. He aims to spiritually sideline us by moving us away from the anchor of our faith – God’s Word. If our enemy gets us to look for our assurance of salvation and God’s favor through our circumstances, emotions, and feelings, he will achieve a great victory. When a believer’s assurance is based on anything other than what God has provided, doubts, fears, and unbelief with flood our hearts and drown us in discouragement, even despair. But we need not go into those “deep waters” for God has given us sure grounds for assurance. We find them in today’s scriptures and the Lord’s dealing with Sarah.

There are two things which are God’s means of providing His children assurance of His salvation, His Presence, and His help as they walk with Him in this difficult world filled with many spiritual foes. The first one is stated and proved. The second one is implied and affirmed throughout the Bible.

First, our God gives assurance to His children through His Word. Twice in today’s scripture we find reference to God’s Word – “As He said” and “As He had promised.” There is much encouragement in these two statements. God said He would do something in Sarah’s life and then He does it. Both point to God being a God who fulfills His promises. Aren’t we glad He isn’t like us? Ever make a promise and not keep it either out of failing to do so or forgetting? Not God. What God says, God does. What God promises, God fulfills. This is so important to the life of a Christian because we are people of promises; saved by God’s promise, kept by God’s promise, and eventually delivered to heaven by God’s promise. The Apostle Peter reminds us of this amazing truth of God’s promises – His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire (2 Peter 1:3-4). Promises are the daily food for the Christian nourishing and sustaining us in our walks with the God who gave us His promises.

The second means of assurance God gives is implied and based on the character of the One giving the promises. Sarah struggled with this. As one reads the account of her questioning the promise of God in stating she would give birth to Isaac, we readily understand her for we are like her. Sometimes, maybe a lot of times, God’s promises seem far-fetched and amazing. Between the devil and our sinful tendency to human reasoning, we find ourselves like Sarah. When tempted to doubt the “reasonableness” of God’s promise, immediately remember who promised – the God who would not or cannot doubt. The Apostle Paul writes to Titus – Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God’s elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness, in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began and at the proper time manifested in his word through the preaching with which I have been entrusted by the command of God our Savior (Titus 1:1-3). In his encouragement to Titus, Paul states, “God who never lies, promised.” Never lies. We may rest everything in this life and the next on the unchanging character of our God. His promises will always be kept because the Promiser cannot lie. Let this be our strength when dark clouds of doubt and human reason seek to question God’s promises.

God wants His people assured of His salvation, His love, His Presence, His power, and His help. And this desire of His for us becomes real through His always kept promises and His unchanging character. Trust both. They will never fail us.

PRAYER: “Father, I praise You for being a God who speaks a perfect Word and cannot lie.”

QUOTE: “God’s character and His Word are the two anchors of assurance we rest upon.”