Daily Manna · Day 279 · October 6
Every Promise Is Yes
“For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us.”
A boy sits on the front step with his bag packed. He is there at the time he was told, and he is still there long after it.
Promises have a history with you. Someone said they would be there, and they were not. You said you would change, and you did not. After enough of that, a promise starts to sound more like an opening offer than a fact. So you learn to hold promises loosely on purpose, because loose things break less when they fall.
It helps to know why Paul wrote this verse. He is defending himself over a change of travel plans. He had said he would come to Corinth, and he did not come, and they noticed. Paul asks whether they think his word is "yea yea, and nay nay," yes and no at the same time. His answer points away from himself to God: "as God is true, our word toward you was not yea and nay." Then he says, "all the promises of God in him are yea." That yes does not wait for someday, and it does not depend on things going right. It is "in him," in Jesus, so the yes is a Person, and He has already come. The "Amen" goes the other way, from the church back to God, which is why Paul says "by us." The promise is God's, the agreeing is ours, and the glory is His.
So which is it, honestly? Has God broken a promise to you? Or did you take a promise from somewhere else and write His name on it? That is worth sitting with, because from the inside the two feel exactly the same. Every promise God really made is already yes in Jesus, so that is one promise you can hold tightly.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 279 is That Which Was Lost (Luke 19:10).