For what Faith-Promise is all about is taking God at God’s word and trusting God to provide. It is about risking God’s generosity or God’s abundance, and saying to God, “Okay, God, I am going to step out in faith and I am going to allow you to lead me, to see the fruit of the Spirit grow in my life. I am going to risk God’s generosity, and I am going to learn and discover how there is always more to God, always love in excess.”
For all the “giving” we seek to have and all the forms of ministry and mission we seek to carry out – are about living out the assumption of that abundance: that we live in and out of God’s abundant, triune life. It is why we say that we cannot possibly out-give God; we can’t! We learn this truth by trusting God, by having faith in God: that God is always good to God’s promise, even during the most desperate of circumstances, even during pandemics and unrest (Genesis 22:1-19)!
What did Bishop White used to say to us? God is good! All the time. All the time, God is good!
God is good to the promise, from beginning to end. Just as God was good to Noah after the flood (Genesis 9). Just as God was good to Moses and Miriam in the exodus (Exodus 5:22ff). Just as God was good to the prophet Isaiah who proclaimed “there would come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse and a branch would grow from that root” (11:1).
Just as God will be good to you, good to us. God will be good to God’s promise!
How may we understand the promises of God being fulfilled or carried out in our lives? How may we receive God’s grace of abundant life?
Pastor Andy Kinsey