I Wanted a Promise About the Outcome

You have been looking for a particular kind of verse and you have not found it, and you have started to suspect it is not in there.

It is not in there.

The verse you want says that this comes right. It says it about your situation specifically, with something in it you can hold up when the fear arrives at four in the morning, and it means what you want it to mean without any of the softening that people do when they quote at you.

You have been through the promises. You have found ones about provision, which are true, and ones about being kept, which are true, and every single time you get to the end of one you find that it has not said the thing.

None of them underwrite the result.

And you have started to feel slightly ashamed of the search, because a man of your age ought to know better, and you do know better in daylight, and at four in the morning you go looking anyway.

So let me stop the hunt rather than continuing it.

There is no verse that guarantees how this goes. Not because the Bible is holding out on you, but because a book that promised every believer their preferred outcome would have been contradicted by the first century, and by every generation since, and by the men who wrote most of it.

What there is instead is one verse about who is working, and that is the one I am going to hand you.

What this page will not do

I am not going to promise you the outcome by another route. That would be the same thing in a different coat, and this site does not do it.

I am not going to tell you the search was faithless. Looking for a guarantee is what a person does who is carrying something they cannot control, and it is closer to prayer than to unbelief.

And I am not going to give you a handful of verses to pick from. That is the failure mode of this whole category. You will get one, it is for this, and everything else on this page exists to put it in your hand.

You are not being refused because you asked wrongly. Scripture says if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not, James 1:5, and upbraideth not is written in for people who have asked more than once and in the small hours, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gives without ever making a man feel foolish for asking.

Here it is

Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.Philippians 1:6

That is the one. Take it, and stop going through the promises.

Now look at what it does, because it is not what people usually make of it.

It does not say the work is easy. It does not say it is quick, and it does not say what shape it takes. There is nothing in it about your situation resolving the way you want.

What it says is who the worker is. He which hath begun. Not you. The beginning is attributed to Him, in the past, as a completed act.

And then the verb that carries the whole thing: will perform it. It is a finishing word. It means to carry through to completion, and the one carrying it through is the same one who started.

That is the promise available to you. Not the result. The worker, and His record of finishing.

You are not the one responsible for the finishing. Scripture says he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ, Philippians 1:6, and both the beginning and the performing are given to Him rather than shared, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is doing that work in a man at four in the morning whether or not the man can feel it.

Why the other one would not have helped

Here is something worth thinking about, and it will take the sting out of not finding what you were after. Scripture settles that in Philippians 1:6, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries it rather than these words.

Suppose you had found it. Suppose there were a verse that guaranteed this particular thing came right.

You would have read it, and you would have felt something for about a day, and then the doubt would have arrived in a different form: does this verse mean what I think, does it apply to me, was that promise for that person in that situation. You know that is true because you have watched it happen with every other promise you have held. I am not putting my own idea over you; Scripture says it in Philippians 1:6, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes it live.

A guarantee held by a man is only ever as strong as his confidence in his own reading, and at four in the morning nobody's confidence in their own reading is strong.

What holds at four in the morning is not a better promise. It is a person whose track record is not being assessed by you at the time.

You are not short of a promise. Scripture says he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself, 2 Timothy 2:13, and the faithfulness is described as a property of His nature rather than as a response to yours, and the Holy Spirit is not waiting for a man to be sure before He continues working.

What standing on this one looks like

It is not a feeling and it will not make the fear stop arriving. Let me tell you what it does instead.

When the thing rises at four, you will find yourself reaching for the guarantee again, because that is the habit. Instead of reaching, say the verse. Out loud if you are alone, which you usually are at that hour. That is not my opinion. Scripture stands behind it in Philippians 1:6, and the Holy Spirit brings it near.

Then notice what you have and have not been given. Scripture holds that ground in Philippians 1:6, and it is the Holy Spirit who carries it into a room like this one.

You have not been told this comes right. You have been told that a good work was begun in you by somebody who finishes what He starts, and that the finishing runs all the way to a day neither of us has seen. This rests on Scripture in Philippians 1:6, and on the Holy Spirit who makes what is written a living thing.

That is smaller than a guarantee and it is much harder to take away, because it does not depend on how this particular thing goes. Whichever way this goes, the sentence is still true in the morning.

You are not holding something that a bad outcome would break. Scripture says his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness, Lamentations 3:22-23, and the newness is tied to the morning rather than to the news the morning brings, and the Holy Spirit carries that into a workshop and a bad week without needing the week to improve first.