A promise from God may very instructively be compared to a cheque payable to order. It is given to the believer with the view of conferring upon him some good thing. It is not meant that he should read it over comfortably, and then have done with it. No, he is to treat the promise as a reality, as a man treats a cheque.
He is to take the promise, and endorse it with his own name by personally receiving it as true. He is by faith to accept it as his own. He sets to his seal that God is true, and true as to this particular word of promise. He goes further, and believes that he has the blessing in having the sure promise of it, and therefore he puts his name to it to testify the receipt of the blessing.
This done, he must present the promise to the Lord in faith, as a man presents a cheque at the counter of the bank. He must plead it by prayer, expecting to have it fulfilled. If he has come to heaven’s bank at the right date, he will receive the promised amount at once. If the date should happen to be further on, he must patiently wait till its arrival, but in the meantime he may count the promise as money, for the bank is sure to pay when the due time arrives. Some fail to place the endorsement of faith upon the cheque, and so they get nothing. Others are slack in presenting it and so they too get nothing. This is not the fault of the promise, but of those who do not act with it in a right manner.
God has given no pledge which He will not redeem, and encouraged no hope which He will not fulfil. I believe all the promises of God, but many of them I have personally tried and proved. I have seen that they are true, for they have been fulfilled to me. I began looking at the promises of God when wading in the surf of controversy. Since then I have been cast into “waters to swim in” (Ezek. 47: 5), which, but for God’s upholding hand, would have proved waters to drown in. The waters rolled in continually, wave upon wave. I do not mention this to exact sympathy, but simply to let the reader see that I am no dry–land sailor. I know the roll of the billows and the rush of the winds. Never were the promises of God so precious to me as at this hour. Some of them I never understood till now––I had not reached the date at which they matured, for I was not mature enough to perceive their meaning.
I would say to all my Master’s servants in their trials––My brethren, God is good. He will not forsake you, He will bear you through. There is a promise prepared for your present emergency, and if you will plead it at the feet of Christ, you shall see the hand of the Lord stretched out to help you. Everything else will fail, but His Word never will.
