Watching God Keep His Promises

By Anneliese Rider

Today in the Word author Ryan Cook, professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at Moody Theological Seminary, hasn’t always understood how or why God changes the flight plan for life—but what he does know is that God is faithful to keep His promises and provide for each leg of the journey.

Flying by faith

In the summer of 2009, Ryan and Ashley Cook were waiting on God.

Ryan had been accepted to Asbury Theological Seminary’s PhD program, but before they moved from Michigan to Kentucky, they’d asked God for three things: a sold house, a scholarship, and a stipend so their two kids wouldn’t have to go to daycare.

“Our house had been on the market for a year. We didn't know how we were going to pay for the PhD program,” Ryan says. “But we still sensed this was what the Lord wanted us to do.”

So they packed up and went south, trusting God to provide.

Changing directions

Raised in church, Ryan made his faith his own in high school and committed to a life of ministry as a missionary pilot.

“I thought, Hey, how cool is that? I can learn how to fly and do ministry at the same time,” Ryan remembers.

He decided to study at Moody Aviation, which at the time, meant two years of Bible training at Moody’s Chicago campus and then going to the aviation campus in Elizabethton, Tennessee. Ryan never made it to Tennessee.

“Missions Conference at Moody convinced me to change my major, which is kind of ironic,” Ryan says. When three people from different missionary aviation organizations said it required a lot of time alone, Ryan realized being a missionary pilot wasn’t the best fit for him.

So he changed his major to Bible and Theology, and he immediately fell in love with the biblical languages. “That opened up my eyes to the Bible even though I’d been reading it pretty much my whole life.”

A different kind of wingman

During his junior year, Ryan met his future wife in arguably the least romantic place on Moody’s Chicago campus: the Student Dining Room.

“My roommate liked this girl on the women’s choir,” Ryan remembers, laughing as he recounts the story. His roommate begged Ryan to join him at the table of young women that all ate together on Tuesday nights before choir practice. “I was like the wingman.”

It’s a good thing, too, because Ashley was sitting at that table.

They hit it off, and two years later, after Ryan’s first year at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary, they married. He taught Bible for two years at a Christian high school, then became an associate pastor in Ludington, Michigan. In their five years in Ludington, he finished his master’s and they started a family.

But in 2009, he felt it was time to pursue his PhD from Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky.

Where God guides, He provides

As frugal planners, Ryan and Ashley didn’t intend to move without selling their house and receiving a scholarship. But when neither happened, they couldn’t shake God’s leading to go anyway.

So they went, and Ryan got a part-time job in the financial aid office.

“Through that, we found out that I actually had been awarded a full scholarship and a stipend,” Ryan says. The notification had been lost in a clerical error, and after completing his first semester, Ryan learned he would be awarded the scholarship, a stipend, and a refund for the tuition he’d already paid.

Three years later, while studying for his comprehensive exams and not at all looking for a job, Ryan received a phone call from the dean of Moody Theological Seminary. He said John Koessler, a friend of Ryan’s and a Moody professor at the time, had recommended him for a position.

So in 2012, Ryan, Ashley, and their three children moved back north to a Chicago suburb so Ryan could teach at Moody—a dream he’d never thought would come true.

‘God is faithful to His promise’

In 2016, Ryan submitted a few sample devotions to Heather Moffitt, the managing editor of Today in the Word at the time. Soon he was on the list of faculty writers.

“Writing for Today in the Word has been just a real blessing to me,” Ryan says. “It is really neat having a chance to work out how God is working in my own life as I engage with these different Scriptures and then being able to hear from readers at times how God has used that particular part of Scripture in their own life.”

The July 2024 issue of Today in the Word, “God’s Promise” is the second half of a two-part devotional about Genesis. (The first half, “In the Beginning,” is from January 2024.)

“It's that promise that really drives the whole story of Genesis,” Ryan says, talking about God’s promises to Abraham to become a great nation and inherit the land of Canaan. “It is God being faithful to His promise even in spite of what a lot of the characters in the story do.”

Ryan has seen firsthand how God keeps His promises—whether it was waiting for a scholarship, a sold house, a stipend, or a spouse—and it’s given him a quiet trust in the truth that God always provides.