God is faithful even when it doesn't seem like it

A while ago a friend and I were chatting about God's promises and how we tell people that God always keeps His promises and is always faithful.  The reason this came up was because we were talking about a situation where a promise God had made to them had changed. It left us wondering, if the previous statement was true.. that God is always faithful and always keeps His promises.

Yesterday morning I was thinking about the Israelites and how God had promised that he would rescue them take them to the promised land.  He kept this promise, and took them to the promised land BUT it wasn't the generation that was given the promise.  So was God unfaithful to them? Did He break His promise? No, He kept His promise - the way the promise looked just changed.

So why did generation one of the Israelites not make it into the promised land? They sinned, they disobeyed God, they worried and moaned ALL the time.  God gave them chances and then the promise changed. Generation one never got to the promised land, but generation two did. God kept His promise but because of sin the way the promise looked changed.

How does this apply to us now a days since we're not generation one of the Israelites? The way I see it, God still gives us promises but sin, choices we make, other people involved make, etc can change the out come of that promise. God may promise us something, but we may do something, or something might happen and the original promise may not be applicable anymore, so God then works the best in that situation and a different outcome of the promise happens. It doesn't man that God hasn't kept His promise, it just changed. It doesn't mean that God isn't faithful, He is. The way it was meant to happen changed and God did something new - but He still works the good in the situation and completes what He said He will do, it just may look different to how we originally thought it would unfold.

xKx