Joshua 23:14 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.
Joshua came to the end of his life and as he looked back he came to this conclusion: God keeps his promises. The promises of God don't exempt us from difficulty. The promises of God don't spare us from struggles. What they do is to guarantee that everything that happens to us is supported by the power, the love and the plan of God.
Joshua still had to fight the battles. He still had to rebuke and challenge his nation. He still had to discipline his children. But what the promises did was to give him confidence that whatever occurred in his life was working towards an end that God had in mind.
Our responsibility to these promises is to count on them; to believe that they are true and to allow them to secure us in the storm. We must also hold onto them as if they were our very life.
A story that shows us how to hold onto a promise, it is a story of a pilot, his name is Henry Dempsey and he flew for the old Eastern airlines. What happened is that shortly after the plane took off the two man crew heard a tattling sound in the rear of the 15 passenger plan. Mr. Dempsey turned control of the plane over to the co-pilot and went back to investigate. When the aircraft hit some turbulence, Mr. Dempsey leaned against the door, which was hinged at the bottom, and the stairway door opened. He tumbled forward, grabbed the railings as he fell, and lay upside down on the stairs as the plane cruised at 190 miles per hour at an altitude of 4,000 feet. He was partly in the aircraft and partly out. The co-pilot saw that the ''door ajar'' indicator light was on and realized something had happened, so he changed course and flew to the Portland International Airport. As the plane landed, Mr. Dempsey's face was about 12 inches above the runway. Mr. Boucher did not realize Mr. Dempsey was hanging on until the plane was on the ground. When the airport crew came to assist Mr. Dempsey they said they had to pry each finger off of the railing individually, he was holding on so tightly.
That is my point … when we hold onto the promises of God this tightly they will keep us safe even 12 inches away from death.
God's promises are not freedom from trials in the race, but power to transcend them through his sufficing grace.
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