You Can Take My Word For It

It use to be that a man's handshake was his bond. Many deals were struck just by a handshake. When a man shook your hand to signify that he accepted the deal, that was considered to be a binding contract. When someone said they were going to do something, they did it. You didn't have to wonder if they would, you knew they would. We don't live in that world anymore.

Instead we live in a world where sports figures are given a huge amount of money, sometimes millions of dollars, to enter into a contract with a certain team to play for a given amount of years. The contract really means nothing because if the athlete decides he wants to play for another team or go somewhere else for more money, he just brings in his lawyers to break the contract. His word meant nothing. You couldn't count on it.

People make promises all the time which they have no intention of fulfilling. Those are called 'pie crust promises; easily made and easily broken'. Sometimes they do have full intentions of keeping the promises but when life gets a little challenging they use that for an excuse to break their promise. The Bible tells us to let our yes be yes and our no be no (Matthew 5:37), in other words mean what you say and stick to it. If you make a vow, a promise, fulfill it so that people will know they can count on you and on your word.

Numbers 30:2 tells us "when a man makes a vow to the Lord, or takes an oath to obligate himself by a pledge, he must not break his word but do everything he said." That's pretty clear. We are to do what we said we would. We must be people you can count on.

Maybe you have been disappointed before by people who have broken their promises. You can't count on them. You never know if their words are just pretty words with no meaning or if they do mean something. Let me assure you that you can count on God. He will never let you down. He will never disappoint you. He will never take back His promises or lie to you. You can take my word for it, but better yet, take HIS Word for it. He has promised in Matthew 24:35 "Heaven and Earth will pass away but my words will never pass away." You have God's word on it.