Promise Fulfilled

 DEVOTION

JOSHUA

PROMISE FULFILLED

Josh 23:14-16

14 "Now I am about to go the way of all the earth. You know with all your heart and soul that not one of all the good promises the LORD your God gave you has failed. Every promise has been fulfilled; not one has failed. 15 But just as every good promise of the LORD your God has come true, so the LORD will bring on you all the evil he has threatened, until he has destroyed you from this good land he has given you. 16 If you violate the covenant of the LORD your God, which he commanded you, and go and serve other gods and bow down to them, the LORD's anger will burn against you, and you will quickly perish from the good land he has given you."

NIV

There it is, two different ways to live with two different outcomes based on the promise of God. We should deal with the second outcome to focus on the first. If they were to bow down and serve other gods they would perish. Nowadays, that is considered the way of the world. As the old Bob Dylan song says, “But you have to serve somebody, yes, serve somebody, Well, it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody” The way of the world is serving the Devil and that will only generate a response of his promise that those who serve the world will perish from the good land. The first outcome we focus on is that we can know with all our heart and soul, that not one of the promises of our Lord has never failed but has been and will always be fulfilled. The finest, or best promise is, of course, Jesus. Without Jesus, we all are doomed to perish, but God promised he loves the world and he gave his one and only son so that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. There are those same two outcomes Joshua was talking about, perish from the land, or knowing with our heart and soul Jesus, we have life. How can we ever not remember that God always fulfills his promise? We can be sure, without a doubt,  knowing in our hearts and souls Jesus has prepared a place for us, he promised that because he has prepared that place, he will come back to get us so that we can be with him in that place. With that promise firmly within our hearts and souls, it would make perfect sense to never even consider looking toward the world with any desire to join in with it. This is not about the don’ts many in the church established years ago with some still lingering in the church, as our culture changes. There is the key to those don’ts. If they change with the world’s culture, then they are man-made. Let us simply Love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, serving him and only him, knowing fully that all his promises are fulfilled. With God time does not exist, so everything that is to come for us has already been done with God. Therefore that is why we know all his promises never fail; they have been fulfilled. We are already in the kingdom of God, the land of promise, but we still have to live in the here and now according to every promise fulfilled.