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God has given promises in the Bible, a fact that no one can deny.
These promises are mainly found in the Old Testament. Not that the New Covenant does not have promises, but it is important to distinguish between promises and facts that God gives us.

The difference is quite small, which is why Christians can sometimes confuse God's promises with the facts God gives. So when it comes to stating things, promises and facts are very similar; we can say that the main difference between the two is in the chronology of time.
A promise is usually about something in the future, which sometimes implies that not all the elements are yet in place for that promise to come into being. The fact is for now, it is available.

For example, we can take this passage where God speaks to Abraham saying this to him:
Genesis 12:3 I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you; And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

We can see that in this passage God use the future tense when He speaks. It is an example as we have just said where the promise is about the future. There are still dozens of promises in the Old Testament that cover not only the Old Covenant, but the whole period before grace. In this passage the families of the earth are not yet blessed, because the cross must occur first.

The facts that God can give us are different from the promises. Facts are about things that can be obtained now. The facts that God gives us in the Bible are available immediately. There are often certain conditions, but when those conditions are met, what God has given is already available.

We can see, for example, certain words of God, or of Jesus, expressed with facts.

Luke 9:35 And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is My beloved Son. Hear Him!”

Here God speaks and gives a fact that we must follow: listen to what Jesus says. This fact, which can also be considered a commandment, is available in the sense that it can be put into practice.

We find other examples that are a little more explicit here:

John 15:7 If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.

Here Jesus gives a fact, if we ask (command, order), then it will be granted to us.

Or here :

Mark 11:24 Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.

Then some people will be able to say to me: "But Franck, these few facts that you have just quoted, are somehow also promises, aren't they? ».
Yes, you are quite right, but the difference lies in the chronology of time. There are promises that were not yet realizable when they were given, and others that I call here facts, which are certainly promises but which are available or realizable immediately at the moment they were given.

Because of this confusion that can sometimes arise, I have very often met Christians who used God's promises for their lives, and who unfortunately remained at this same level even after years of conversion.
In the New Covenant, God has given us all the promises we need, and these promises are not only good, but they are achievable now.
No circumstances need to intervene so that the New Covenant promises can be made available. They are all available now.
We are speaking here only of the facts that have been promised and that concern the time of grace. I understand, of course, that for example Jesus promised that He would come again, but that it has not yet been fulfilled, or that this promise is not yet available because the time has not yet come.
However, all the facts about us that God has given us are available to us today. We could say that these are promises that have been fulfilled, and have become available facts.

Having said that, we can now understand that God has fulfilled all the promises concerning us through Jesus. This in the sense that nothing is to be expected, everything God has planned to give us is already available to us if we do our part.
For example, we can be saved if we accept Jesus' offer for us on the cross. Or we can be healed of our illnesses if we activate our faith in it.

Let's understand that if God has been giving us promises for thousands of years, it is because those promises are good and useful. We need to use them to help us go deeper in our relationship with Him.

Yes promises are good, but they should not be used for too long!

Some may say to me: "But Franck, you just said that the promises were given by God, and now you're telling us that we shouldn't use those promises for too long? ».

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying!

If we think about it for a moment, a promise is a bit like a contract. "I promise that I will do this or that for you. It is the word of the one who gives the promise that is binding as a contract, and the promise is there because the other party is not in full trust. There is therefore a word given, and it is this word that is considered as authoritative, so that the promise may be kept.
If there is full and complete trust of the other party, the first party does not need to promise anything. A promise occurs when there is not full knowledge and trust concerning the nature of the person.
This is therefore for a brief description of the function of a promise.

Now remember when you were a child and wanted to ask one of your parents something.
What were you doing? Or rather, what did you say when one of your parents agreed to your request?
"Sure, you promise me? ». 
You needed a promise to give you assurance that the word would be kept.
Then a little later, when it was time to act on the promise, you would go to your parent and say something like, "You promised me you would do this, so can we do it now? ».  
In this case the promise was a security for the child, it was like a contract made with the parent without really knowing it. This promise, which acted as a contract, gave him peace and assurance that the word would be kept.

Now let's think for a moment, and see why a child needs a promise from his parents in order to feel confident and at peace with a given word? 
Quite simply because the child does not yet know his or her father or mother in the depths of their person. A young child has no idea whether his or her father or mother is a reliable person, a person with integrity, honesty and truthfulness, or a liar, manipulative person. It is only much later, with experience and knowledge, that this child will have a deeper insight into the personalities of both parents. 
Why is this?

Simply because this child will have grown up to maturity, will have reached adulthood, and will also have had many circumstances and situations in which to form an opinion about the personality type of his parents. This child will know what kind of people his parents really are.

What would happen if you saw an adult talking to his father and saying something like, "Daddy, can we do what you said? You promised me! ».

I think you could assume that there would be two main options for an adult to talk to his or her father in this way.

The first would be that his father is not a person of his word, nor a very reliable person, so this child would in some way be obliged to remind his father that he has made a commitment by his word to him.

The second would be that this child would have grown up, but he would not have bothered to use the various circumstances to get to know his father more deeply, with his adult view and knowledge. Consequently, he would not yet know his father's true personality. Therefore, this child would be forced to remind his father that he gave a promise, simply because he does not really know his father.

We will not consider the first option because it does not correspond at all with the nature of God. This passage confirms it for us.

Hebrews 10:23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.

So let's take the second option. Let's assume that this dad is a person you can count on and who keeps his word. What do you think this father's reaction would be when he hears his grown-up child talk to him like this?    
At the very least, he would be very surprised, or perhaps even saddened, at seeing his son who hadn't bothered to see all the opportunities in his life, in order to realize that his father is a person who keeps his word. This father would have wanted his son to make the effort to get to know him and to base his relationship with him, not on "You promised me! "but rather on "Thank you, and I know you will because I know you in your depths! ».

Well with God it is exactly the same, except that God is never saddened. God is joy, he is peace, he is love, which is why he cannot feel sorrow as a human would.

If you are a recent Christian, for only a few years, well use God's promises because you need them. They are a foundation for your growth. These promises help you, the time for you to grow.  God has given them to you, it is not for nothing.

God keeps His promises active for His young children!

Psalms 105:8 He remembers His covenant forever, The word which He commanded, for a thousand generations,

The promises that God has given you in the Bible or in prayer, will be very helpful if one day you feel a little "slipping" in your faith because of various circumstances or situations. Hold on to these promises like a rope that will keep you out of the water. Reaffirm them out loud, proclaim them aloud before all good and evil spiritual powers, these promises are a very important point of contact to help you learn to activate your faith more and more.

But with time and your motivation and determination, you will grow in your relationship with God, Jesus or the Holy Spirit. Through this growth, just like a child, you will know God more and more deeply. You will see who He is. In this loving relationship with Him, the Holy Spirit will enable you to know the depths of the person of God.

1 Corinthians 2:10 But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.

The Holy Spirit will be the one who will help you to know God, Jesus, more deeply. He will help you to know who God really is deep down inside, how He thinks, what His personality is so to speak.
The deeper you go into this depth of knowing Him, the less you will need to use the promises He has made to you, so that you will not use them at all, because they will have been replaced by something much better.
The goal is to no longer need to use God's promises.
Let's be clear, this doesn't mean that we don't have to take God's promises into account anymore, quite the contrary. It simply means that it is no longer God's promise that is the source of the activation of my faith, but it is the intimate knowledge I have of His person.

Again, promises are useful and we need them in the early years of our relationship with God because they contribute to the knowledge of His person.

Psalm 138:2 I will worship toward Your holy temple, And praise Your name For Your lovingkindness and Your truth;
For You have magnified Your word above all Your name.

However, as I begin to have a true knowledge of the person of God, I will use God's promises less and less, simply because intimate knowledge of His person is far superior to a promise.
That is why the more I grow in intimate knowledge of the person of God, the less the promises He has given me will be indispensable and useful to me.

As we have said above, today God's promises are fulfilled in regard to our present life.

2 Corinthians 1:20  For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us.

Jesus is the fulfilment of all God's promises. Because we are born again having accepted the offer He made to us on the cross, Jesus becomes the "Amen".
What did Paul mean by this "Amen"?
Simply that, through Jesus we not only have all of God's promises available to us now in our lives, but that simply knowing Jesus in a relationship with Him is equivalent to making all of God's promises our own and living them. Paul demonstrates here that knowing Jesus in a deep relationship with Him replaces all of God's promises to us.

In other words, if I am in a deep relationship, and in the knowledge of the person of Jesus, and through Him of God, then all of God's promises have come to life in me. So I no longer need to proclaim them or remind God of them, because they are now part of my life, my person, my way of thinking.

Some may say to me, " Franck, what you are saying is good, but I see some great Old Testament figures who have been spiritually advanced for decades sometimes using God's promises in their lives.

Yes, you are absolutely right!

1 Kings 8:25  Therefore, Lord God of Israel, now keep what You promised Your servant David my father, saying, ‘You shall not fail to have a man sit before Me on the throne of Israel, only if your sons take heed to their way, that they walk before Me as you have walked before Me.’

Psalm 119:49 (CEB) Remember your promise to your servant,  for which you made me wait.

Here we clearly see Solomon and His father David taking turns using God's promises in their relationship with Him. Yet we know that both Solomon and David were powerfully used by God, but it would seem that both continued to use God's promises in their relationship with God.
Yes, this is very true.
But it is important to remember that neither David nor Solomon had the opportunity to be born again, to become a new person in the image of God. It is enough to see that both of them did not always make the best choices in their lives.
Solomon, like David, had hundreds of concubines, yet God never said it was the right thing to do. Solomon ended up worshipping other gods. This is not to judge them at all, but simply to show that before the cross, new birth was not available, and people had only partial knowledge of God.

Today we can not only become like God by making a firm decision to change our mentality thanks to the new person that we are, but also have a true intimate knowledge of the person of God, something that the people of the Old Covenant did not have. This is why Solomon, David and many others had no choice but to use God's promises in their relationship with Him.

But today the deal is not the same at all. God dwells permanently within us. His Spirit that searches the depths of God has taken up residence in us, witnessing the person of our Father. This is why not all the examples from the Old Testament are good to take. Of course all of them serve as examples, but not all of them are good to reproduce in our lives.

I remember one day when I spoke about this teaching on God's promises for the first time to someone I knew well. She said that she did not see the point of no longer using God's promises, because it seemed to her that it was the same as believing by a promise or believing by intimate knowledge of the person of God. For her, the result was the same because we believed in both cases.
So I explained to her that it makes a huge difference.
If you are married, what would you think if your spouse every time he or she asked you something sought a promise from you?
If of course we assume that you are a person who is not forgetful and can be counted on, you would think that after a while you would say to yourself that your spouse really needs to get to know you more deeply. You might wonder if he or she really trusts you enough.

When we are spiritually mature, knowing God intimately will always be superior to a promise in the area of faith.
Why is that?
Simply because if the basis for activating my faith is based on a promise, then I will be subject to whether I believe that promise or not. Doubt can always have a hold on me because I do not have intimate knowledge of the person of God. Therefore, I will always have the choice to believe without doubt, or to let doubt invade me or not about that promise. The promise will always remain a promise, a simple contract to which we commit ourselves.

But if the basis of the activation of my faith is based on the intimate knowledge of the person of God, then everything is different.
Not as in the promise where I will always have the choice of believing or not believing until it is fulfilled, when I know God, nothing and no one can give me the choice of believing or not believing.
I know, I have seen, I have heard: the basis of my faith is then founded on what I know of Him, it is engraved in me, and nothing and no one can change it.
There is no more promise to believe or not to believe, there is what I know, what I have seen, what is engraved in me, which shows me what God is, how He thinks.  I know who He is, and I no longer need Him to promise me anything, because my knowledge of Him goes far beyond that.

Acts 2:39   For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call.”

So the promise is good when I am a spiritual child. But at the adult stage, I have to leave the promise to pass to the intimate knowledge of His person, so the promise becomes useless.

If you've been born again for a few years now, then maybe it's time for you to take the next step. Enter into that intimate knowledge of the person of God that will allow you to believe what you know about Him, not what you hope for.
You will no longer need to search for a promise that matches your prayer topic. You will base your relationship with God on your intimacy with Him.
As a result, the relationship will be much more intense, much deeper, and much more powerful.
You will be in supernatural peace because you will know your Father. Your relationship will no longer be contractual, but loving. That makes all the difference!

No more taboos, no more embarrassment, no more pressure, but instead a real intense love relationship.
This state will push you to know Him more and more, and the more you know God, the more you will be in His image; the more you cling to His image, the more you will have the results that Jesus had in His life on earth.
So come out of promise and enter into intimacy!


Bye for now...

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