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What We Promised Each Other

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park, Washington, D. C. · Jan 2, 1913

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 90, No. 1.

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What We Promised Each Other

By Meade MacGuire

MEADE MAC GUIRE
WHEN I accepted the Bible as a letter from God to men, I accepted his statement that I was a lost sinner, and that he loved me and had provided a way of salvation for me.
On accepting his gift, he made me certain definite, personal promises on which I base all my hope for this life and the life to come. He also required, and I made, certain definite, solemn, and sacred promises to him. Though these mutual pledges mean so much to me, I am prone to forget, so I find it helpful to go over them often.

What God Promised Me

1. His presence: "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." Matt. 28: 20.
2. His peace: "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you." John 14: 27.
3. His joy: "These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full." John 15: 11.
4. His victory: "Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?" "For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world." 1 John 5: 5, 4.
5. His power: "But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you." Acts 1: 8.
6. His character: "And as we have borne the image of the earthly, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly." 1 Cor. 15: 49.
7. His tribulation: "In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." John 16: 33.
8. His glory: "And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them." John 17: 22.
9. His passion for saving men: "I will make you fishers of men." Matt. 4: 19. "And hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation." 2 Cor. 5: 18.
10. A place on his throne: "To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne." Rev. 3: 21.

What He Required and I Promised Him

1. To love him supremely: "And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength." Mark 12: 30.
2. To relinquish everything to him: "So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he can not be my disciple." Luke 14: 33.
3. To renounce the love of the world: "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world." 1 John 2: 15; James 4: 4.
4. To trust him implicitly in both temporal and spiritual things: "Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat; neither for the body, what ye shall put on." Luke 12: 22. "He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?" Rom. 8: 32.
5. Not to worry nor be discouraged: "Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God." Phil. 4: 6.
6. To confess my sins and stop sinning: "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins." 1 John 1: 9. "Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more." John 8: 11.
7. To yield my will and life absolutely to his Spirit: "What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? . . . Therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's." 1 Cor. 6: 19, 20. "For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live." Rom. 8: 13.
8. To love his children: "This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you." John 15: 12.
9. To seek and save the lost: "Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled." Luke 14: 23.
10. To prepare for his return: "Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, looking for and hastening unto the coming of the day of God?" 2 Peter 3: 11, 12.
Of all his good promises, only the last remains unfulfilled. And how sadly and often have I failed in keeping my vows to him! But he has provided against discouragement, even in this experience, by the assurance that "he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust," and "like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him."
By claiming his promises I shall be able to keep mine until the victory is won and he fulfils the last and crowning one to me.
Loveland, Colo.