We have come to the end of our Thumbkin song. In the last post we talked about Mr Ring Man and today we are singing… Where is Pinky? Where is Pinky? This is our last finger of prayer.
When you think of the pinky finger what comes to your mind?
Yep!
Pinky promises!
The pinky promise is the promise of promises. It’s the ultimate can’t break no matter what promise. My husband and I try very hard to always keep our promises. We have taught our girls that if you promise something, you do it. We believe that if you say it, you should mean it. However as hard as we might try, there are times when circumstances beyond our control do not allow us to do what we said we would do.
We are not sovereign or infallible… so as parents we will fail as promise keepers with our children at times. There are promises that we simply can’t make because we don’t know what tomorrow holds. So we try to always point our girls to the reliability of the promises of God… because His promises are never broken.
Blessed be the Lord, who has given rest to His people Israel, according to all that He promised; not one word has failed of all His good promise, which He promised through Moses His servant.
1 Kings 8:56
I have had the great pleasure the last few years to pour this truth over and over into the children, including the toddlers and preschoolers, at our church. We are in the midst of Lifeway’s material, The Gospel Project for kids. In this study the kids begin in Genesis and go through the entire Bible in a three year span book by book. As they have gone through the Scriptures, they have seen how God has said what He meant, and meant what He said, and done exactly, to the T, what He said He would do when He said He would do it.
If God says it, it is as good as done.
I love asking the kids if God ever breaks His promises and hearing them shout, “Noooooo!” I love asking them if God’s Word is true and hearing them shout, “Yeeeessssss!“
Many times as we look at the promises of God we want to just learn and teach about the ones that have God meeting all our needs. You no the one’s like Jeremiah 29:11,
For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.
These promises are important. They are much needed reminders for us and for our children… but in just a verse up from it we see the reason for this promise,
“For thus says the Lord, ‘When seventy years have been completed for Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill My good word to you, to bring you back to this place.”
Jeremiah 29:10
Th promise of Jeremiah 29:11 came as a reminder to the people that God was not through with them even though He had to discipline them. You see this promise came as a result of another promise…
“Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘Because you have not obeyed My words, behold, I will send and take all the families of the north,’ declares theLord, ‘and I will send to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, My servant, and will bring them against this land and against its inhabitants and against all these nations round about; and I will utterly destroy them and make them a horror and a hissing, and an everlasting desolation. Moreover, I will take from them the voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the sound of the millstones and the light of the lamp. This whole land will be a desolation and a horror, and these nations will serve the king of Babylon seventy years.
Jeremiah 25:8-11
God had also made a promise to the people from the very beginning of forming them into a nation that if they obeyed Him and kept His Word they would remain in the land, but the moment they got to big for their britches and turned away from Him, He would indeed deal with them (Deuteronomy 28-30).
With our children and preschoolers the 70 years of captivity became the 70 year timeout, because timeout they get… captivity not so much. Part of remembering that God keeps His promises is remembering that when He says He will discipline us for not listening and obeying… He means it. He’s just as good on these promises as He is on all the others.
He gives us the promises like Jeremiah 29:11, to remind us that discipline does not mean He has forsaken us… but it is proof of His love for us. If God is letting you get away with a lifestyle of sin and you feel no guilt and experience no consequences… be concerned dear friend. You just might not be His…
You want to know one way that anyone around even in a crowded public place knows my kids are my kids? When there is a need for discipline or correction, the ones that belong to me become very evident. I can be kind and goofy and fun with a room full of strangers kids all day long, but when it comes time for correction, the strangers kids are handed over to their own parents, but I deal with mine.
My kids are the ones I invest not just fun in, but I invest discipline in. I expect more from my own… because I know what they know and I know what they have been taught. I know what they are choosing to ignore and disobey.
God knows what we know. He knows what of His Word we have heard. He knows if His Spirit resides within us… therefore He will discipline His own. His Word is His promise and His promises are kept… whether they be to put us in “timeout” or bring us out just like He said He would.
How important it is that we pray that our children would grasp this truth and that we teach them the promises of God… and the importance of obeying His Word… and that must begin with us expecting them to listen to and obey ours.
God doesn’t make empty promises or empty threats to His children… so neither should we.
This parenting thing can be kind of scary. Trust me I get it. So as we attempt to do this thing to the best of our ability, let us be sure to remember the promises of God ourselves…
As for the promise which I made you when you came out of Egypt, My Spirit is abiding in your midst; do not fear!’
Haggai 2:5
We don’t do this alone.
God is with us. If you are His child beloved, He is there to help you. The gospel is good for more than a past salvation experience… the gospel is good news for every day after.
And we preach to you the good news of the promise made to the fathers, that God has fulfilled this promise to our children in that He raised up Jesus, as it is also written in the second Psalm, ‘You are My Son; today I have begotten You.
Acts 13:33
The promises made to us by God are good. He made the promise to the fathers before us that He would send a Savior… and He did. He sent His Son, nailed Him to a cross on our behalf, and raised Him from the dead, just as He said He would so that we would have life with Him and in Him for all eternity… those promises He kept… and He has promised us that He will come again… and this promise He will fulfill to our children as well.
The thing about the promises of God is that the proof is in the promise.
For when God made the promise to Abraham, since He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself, saying, “I will surely bless you and I will surely multiply you.” And so, having patiently waited, he obtained the promise. For men swear by one greater than themselves, and with them an oath given as confirmation is an end of every dispute. In the same way God, desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose, interposed with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us.
Hebrews 6:13-18
Our hope is in Him.
Teach your children that their hope is in Him.
Pray Momma, that your children will lean hard into the unchangeable purpose and promises of God. Pray that they would place their hope in His Word and no one else’s. His Word can be trusted. His promises are solid and they can stand secure and strong on them. His promises can be patiently waited for because we know they are true.
Also see: Romans 4:12-20, Romans 11:29, Ephesians 1:13