Mission Update: Before I get into the word, I want to provide you a quick update. Because of your support, we are now providing 200 meals per day, five days a week (1,000 meals per week), to the Haitian community we minister to in La Vega, Dominican Republic. I provided a video update. To watch it, please watch here: https://youtu.be/tg18eLJ7ct4
Today we continue our series entitled, “Faith and Patience Volume IV — The Wonder Twins”. I have laid the foundation for faith. Now I am doing the same for patience. On Friday I mentioned five steps to standing on a promise from God. I also mentioned Joseph and what he had to go through in order to receive what God said. Today we will review both.
(?James? ?1?:?2-4? KJV)
2 My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations;
3 Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.
4 But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.
(James 1:2-4 TPT)
2 My fellow believers, when it seems as though you are facing nothing but difficulties see it as an invaluable opportunity to experience the greatest joy that you can!
3 For you know that when your faith is tested it stirs up power within you to endure all things.
4 And then as your endurance grows even stronger it will release perfection into every part of your being until there is nothing missing and nothing lacking.
(Galatians 6:9 NIV)
Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
So what does this mean for you today? A few things.
1. There are steps to receiving and standing on a Word from God.
Step 1: We discover something God planned to do in our lives before the world began. This is a critical step. It cannot be skipped. Faith begins where the will of God is known! Faith begins in the heart of God and NOT our selfish desires. Discovering God’s true purpose for something often takes us some time.
Step 2: Since God’s promises are often bigger than what we feel worthy of, we have to open our hearts to the point where we can believe that God will do it through us. I call this, “Expanding our capacity to believe God.” This is a process. It often requires meditating on God’s grace. We must remind ourselves, over and over again, that God’s grace is unearned and undeserved. He did not promise it because we are good. He promised it because He is good!
Step 3: Once we believe what God said and we can see ourselves doing it, we must build up our faith for it. This is where we either meditate on the scriptures that support it, or we simply meditate on what God said. We must give divine consideration to God’s promise. We consider His Word, over and over again, until what God said is more real to us than what we see down here, in this world. God’s promise, without any sense-realm evidence to support it, must be more real to you than what your senses are saying to you.
Step 4: Faith is an action word, so at this phase, we are to put our faith in action. Faith is something we SAY, something we DO, or a seed we SOW, solely based on what God revealed. We are performing actions in the present, based on what God revealed to us about our future. We must keep repeating this process — doing, saying, and sowing — as we wait for the manifestation of the promise. And we keep doing this, no matter how long it takes.
Step 5: This is honestly the hardest part of me. In this phase, WE WAIT! God’s promises have a timing component. They will not manifest before their time. God told you WHAT, but He did not tell you WHEN! So you have to WAIT and you must keep on waiting until the fullness of time comes. This is why you need faith AND patience. Part of the waiting was your “processing period”, but after you are processed and you are truly ready, that does not mean that everything else is ready. This is why you require patient endurance in order to become mature in Christ. If you build up this patient endurance, the text says you can be PERFECT; which means MATURE in Christ. It takes real maturity to WAIT as long as it takes!
*** God is not in a hurry. He is not moved by our impatience. He will do what He said, but He will do so WHEN He planned to do so!
2. God speaks to our “TO BE” stage from our “RIGHT NOW” stage.
a) God knows the end of the beginning. When He looks at us, because He is not confined by time, He sees where we are right now, He sees our future (the entire span of our lives), He sees our children, and He also sees our children’s children.
b) God is too big of a God and His grace is too powerful for Him to be overly concerned with what you consider to be HUGE at this moment. What is big to you is NOT big to God.
c) God is in eternity and He lives outside of time. For Him, there is no past, present, or future. He can see everything at the same time. So when God speaks, for Him it is always NOW. He speaks from the position of the ETERNAL NOW! This can be confusing to us. Because when we hear something that sounds like NOW, we expect it NOW, even though God may have meant that He will do it 10 years from now. When God gave Joseph the dream, he thought it was going to happen then. But did not know all the things that had to happen. We will learn that the actual dream did not manifest until 20 years later! So when God speaks to you, and it sounds like NOW, just remember that He may be speaking to your “TO BE” stage, so get ready to exercise faith AND patience!
3. When we first receive the promise, we may think we are ready, but in most cases, we are NOT ready.
Joseph received the promise of God in the PATERNAL phase of His life. When he received it, he was young and dumb. He thought he was ready. He was not ready. He had to endure the PIT phase, POTIPHAR phase, and PRISON phase before he was ready for the PALACE phase, where he would serve as the Prime Minister of Egypt.
The point is that we often think we are ready when God speaks a promise. But the truth, in most cases, is that we are not. We must be processed and prepared. And when God finally does it, we often look back and THANK GOD that He did not give “IT” to us when we wanted it, because we were truly not ready. The right thing, at the wrong time, becomes the wrong thing! If God gives you what you consider to be a blessing BEFORE you are ready for it, the BLESSING can turn into a BURDEN.
Trust God. Trust His timing. He knows what He is doing. When the proper times comes, He will manifest everything He said. Until then, keep exercising faith AND patience! This is how you lay hold of the promises of God!
That’s enough for today.
Declaration of Faith:
Father, I am in this thing for the long haul. I know that You are dedicated to the plans You made for me before the world began. You are more dedicated than I am. You watch over Your Word to perform it. Everything You promised SHALL come to pass. It just does not have to happen when I want it to. It will happen when You planned for it to happen. Therefore, I develop faith AND patience. I build up my faith, meditating Your promises, and I develop patience, as my faith is tested, over and over again. Living this way, I will get to the point where I am mature – with nothing missing and nothing lacking in my life! I declare this by faith. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
This is Today’s Word. Apply it and prosper!
