Before you read more of this blog post, grab your Bible and a pen. (If you have two pens in pretty colors, that’s even better.) All set? Great! We’ve been talking about the promises of God all month on the blog. God’s promises are powerful, but let’s be honest, sometimes they can be a little bit hard to hang on to, right? When our world is on fire, trusting God’s promises instead of our emotions or circumstances can feel a bit like holding on to smoke. Just when we think we’ve got it, the promises seem to slip right through our fingers, leaving us leaning on less than solid ground. That’s why we need to practice clinging to God’s promises. (And practice and practice and practice.)
A Simple Discipline for Choosing God’s Promises
I started my New Year by reading All of Grace. It’s an old book written by Charles Spurgeon. (For more on why we should read books by old, dead guys, check out this post.) This paragraph jumped off the page at me:
A notable form of faith arises out of assured knowledge; this comes of growth in grace, and is the faith which believes Christ because it knows Him, and trusts Him because it has proved Him to be infallibly faithful. An old Christian was in the habit of writing T and P in the margin of her Bible whenever she had tried and proved a promise. How easy it is to trust a tried and proved Savior! You cannot do this as yet, but you will do so. Everything must have a beginning. You will rise to strong faith in due time. This matured faith asks not for signs and tokens, but bravely believes.
You are free to test the promises of God. Lean against them with all of your weight. They will never bend or break. It’s okay to remind yourself of this. Did you catch Spurgeon’s story about the woman who wrote the letters T and P in her Bible? Long before the Bible journaling craze hit, this woman realized she needed to do more than just read the Word, she needed to glue herself to it. She needed to go beyond just knowing the promises of God. She needed to ask the Lord to show her how He’d kept them in her life. I want to follow her lead.
Ts and Ps Everywhere
When you’ve leaned hard against a promise and God has proved to be faithful, make a note of it with a few strokes of your pen.
As you study God’s Word this year, why not develop the habit of placing Ts and Ps next to promises you’ve seen God keep. T stands for tried and P stands for proved. When you’ve leaned hard against a promise and God has proved to be faithful, make a note of it with a few strokes of your pen. Over time your Bible will be filled with the letters T and P, a record of God’s nature as a Promise Keeper. Let’s practice. Here are a few of my favorite promises. Look them up in your Bible. If you’ve tried this promise and God has proved Himself faithful, make a note with a T and P. Psalm 46:1 John 16:33 Psalm 139:5 John 14:27 Romans 8:37 Hebrews 13:5 Because God’s Word is loaded with powerful promises and because we can count on God to keep every one of them, by the time we ring in 2018, our Bibles will have Ts and Ps everywhere. As we begin to trace God’s faithfulness, we are able to trust His promises more and more.