A FAITH-FILLED, PROPHETIC WORD OF ENCOURAGEMENT!
November 25, 2024
BY CRYSTAL G.H. LOWERY
There is a line that I really like from the original Mary Poppins where Mary Poppins says, “Oh, those are pie crust promises – easily made, easily broken!” It’s that time of year when we begin to look inward and upward reflecting on the year that has been and the year that will be. A big part of that reflection boils down to promises. Promises you have made – to yourself, to others as well as promises others have made to you. Did you keep your New Year’s resolution from last January, a promise you made to yourself? Did things or a situation happen as someone persuaded you it would, a promise of sorts made to you?
It’s easy to look at the results of promise making and blame those who didn’t uphold the promise keeping, even if you are the one where the fingers are being pointed. People are fallible, as we all know. We revel in putting people on pedestals like they are a demi-god and then bashing them when they fall short of what they said they would do. Sometimes, it is very deserved, but other times, they are a product of the harvest of the garden – the fall of man. Either way, people aren’t perfect and make mistakes whether it is on purpose or by mistake, for which they sometimes are embarrassed and ashamed.
Have you had someone to make a promise to love and cherish you until death and found out that their heart and eyes looked at someone else? Have you waited at an event or restaurant for someone only to be stood up? Have you told yourself that you would treat your body better and make better choices only to look at yourself in the mirror and see an unhealthy, overweight person looking back at you?
Promises…human promises…not kept nearly enough…from others and ourselves. The issue is that most of the time promises made based on human strength or will-power fail because the foundation they are made on is unsustainable. But, when a promise is based on something else that is unbreakable and unshakeable, that is another story altogether.
There is one thing that God cannot do and that is lie. So, if I take God at His Word, what He says is TRUTH. This is why an unfulfilled or broken promise is called barren and a promise kept is pregnant with life.
Barren, that is what Elizabeth was called. She was aged and never had a child. Elizabeth had wanted a child and from the reading of verses surrounding her story, she had a promise from God for this child. However, from the lens of human promise keeping, she was called barren. What’s more, not only was she barren, she was aged as well, which means her statistics of having a child (again through a human promise keeping lens) was getting less and less by the day, and maybe even thought to be impossible.
However, through the lens of promise keeping based on what God says, that less and less had always been more and more and what was the impossible had always been the possible. They are two competing lenses, one projecting death and the other projecting life.
The angel Gabriel visited Zechariah, Elizabeth’s husband, and told him that his prayer for a child had been answered and that Elizabeth would have a son and they were to name him John. Of course, Zechariah, had on the lenses of broken promises, and doubted Gabriel’s message. Zechariah asked for a sign that is was true because he and Elizabeth were so old.
“Then the angel said, ‘I am Gabriel. I stand beside God himself. He has sent me to announce to you this good news. But now, since you did not believe my words, you will be stricken silent and unable to speak until the day my words have been fulfilled at their appointed time and a child is born to you. That will be your sign!’” (Luke 1: 19-20 TPT)
Zechariah needed a new lens through which to see the promise. In Psalms, it says that what is in a man’s heart comes out of his mouth. We can see that Zechariah had doubt in his heart, a way of seeing unfulfilled promises through the broken system of the world. I believe that the sign granted to him of being mute until John was born was a way of allowing Zechariah time to renew his heart so that words of faith could be renewed and cultivated so that when he could speak, only words of faith could be spoken – a new lens to view the promise of his son, John.
After Elizabeth became pregnant with John, she “With joy … exclaimed, ‘See how kind it is of God to gaze upon me and take away the disgrace of my barrenness!’” (Luke 1:25 TPT). She saw the goodness and favor of God on her life and the miracle of conceiving John, a long-awaited promise, even in her older years. She had disgrace and a stigma attached to her for not having children in her culture and society. In those days, it there was a sadness and deep disgrace when women could not have children. After living in the shadow of disgrace through the lense of barrenness, the promise of God intervened in her situation and she then dwelled in the shadow of grace, through the lens of life. John the baptizer, the cousin and forerunner of Jesus, was sent from the Promise Keeper.
In this season, let us refocus and take off the lens of doubt and put on the lens of faith, enabling us to see not only the promise, but more importantly the Promise Keeper. As Gabriel later said to Mary (the mother of Jesus), “’…Not one promise from God is empty of power. Nothing is impossible with God!’” (Luke 1:37 TPT)
Unlike the easily broken pie crust promises quote from Mary Poppins, God’s promises are not easily broken. What God says, He means. He cannot lie. His promises are strong, unbreakeable, and unshakeable. His promises don’t crumble like a flaky pie crust when you eat them. God’s promises endure to the end and have the most delicious filling!
Based On Faith.
Crystal G.H. Lowery, Esq is a Christian Estate Planning Attorney and is the owner and founding attorney of Law Office Of Crystal G.H. Lowery, LLC. She is also the founder of Based on Faith and an ordained minister who has a passion to share Jesus with the world. Based on Faith is an organization whose vision is to become an international resource that increases biblical knowledge of faith within the Body of Christ through comprehensive teaching, discussion of law, and the prophetic.
Copyright 2024 ©, Crystal G.H. Lowery and Based on Faith. All Rights Reserved.