Standing on the Promises

Russell Kelso Carter was a man of many careers — cadet and professor at a military academy, sheep rancher, physician, and finally minister. Chronically ill in his thirties, he staked everything on God's promises of healing and care, and recovered; the experience made the word promise the pivot of his faith, and this 1886 hymn its anthem.

The hymn is deliberately martial — it marches. Standing on the promises that cannot fail... standing on the promises of God my Saviour. Carter had drilled cadets; he knew that a soldier's confidence is only as good as the ground under his feet, and he planted the believer's feet on 2 Peter's exceeding great and precious promises.

Each stanza names what the promises overcome — the howling storms of doubt and fear, the sword of the Spirit against the enemy — and the refrain keeps returning to the same solid footing: standing, standing, standing on the promises of God. It is faith not as feeling but as stance: bound to Him eternally by love's strong cord.