“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a dream fulfilled is a tree of life” Prov 13:4.
I image that nearly all of us, at some point, have looked to God to answer a prayer believing and hoping to see its fulfillment the way we requested and within a timely manner, only to be let down with heart breaking results and or endless delays. These moments can be crushing and usually lead to our sick heart questioning our faith. It is also at these critical times that the enemy of our soul comes to sow lies within the fabric of our delicate hearts, such as: “God doesn’t care for me, He is not always faithful, my believing makes no difference, why even get my hopes up, does He even exist?” ect… Unfortunately, for many their pain and egos don’t allow them to critically evaluate themselves and their prayer to discover flaws. The trying of our faith and the development of our souls is never an easy thing to go through. In this blog I am going to attempt to share key principals of the Kingdom of God that will unlock mysteries and bring life giving revelation enabling you to properly “Stand on His Promises” and see your God-given dreams fulfilled.
I wish I could say that I was one of those individuals who were smart enough to closely listen to the advice and wisdom of the those that have travelled the road ahead of me, and that I was able to avoid the potholes and the damage they cause. For me it seems that these revelations have mostly come from the desperate cries of a shattered heart. I truly hope to communicate with clarity to enable you to understand and apply these principals sparing you much heart ache and pain. I begin with: evaluate your prayer. Are you asking God to do something that you want done or are you asking Him for something He wants done? For those of us who have chosen to proclaim Jesus as our Lord, we have given our lives to Him, trusting in His saving grace. Our lives are no longer ours, but we have been bought with a price. So, if we use our prayer life to try to impose our will over our lives, we are in a sense taken back our lives and proclaiming that we our Lord of our lives. In these situations, it is no wonder that God backs away and leaves us to our own devises hoping that we will once again surrender our lives back to His Lordship. There is a reason that the child of God must learn to walk by faith and not by sight. God sees the beginning from the end, we don’t! Our perspective is extremely limited and too often dominated by our present circumstances, which means nothing to God and his ability to navigate us to where He wants us to be. Too many times we find ourselves in very uncomfortable circumstances and we immediately run to God praying that He change them, not realizing that God has you right where He wants you. Even worse, we are praying for a change and then the enemy comes along and opens new doors, enticing us to travel down a different road and we walk through those doors thinking that they are God’s answer to our prayers. You can see how praying our will over God’s can be a very slippery slope leading to heart break. I am learning to be content in whatever circumstances that I find myself and continue to surrender my life to God and pray not my will be done, but HIS. When I successfully accomplish this, something amazing happens. First, a peace that passes understanding comes over me and then insight begins to develop within my mind and my heart. God starts giving me clues and glimpses to His plans and how He will eventually work things out for my good and the advancement of the Kingdom of God on the earth. Never forget that God is good and that He always has the final say.
“What delight comes to you when you wait upon the Lord!” (Matt:5:4)
The second thing that I will say is: learn to wait on the Lord. As I see it, if there is no “delight” then you are not waiting on the Lord. If you are like me, patience is usually a challenge. I tend to involve myself with many things, so efficiency and productivity are crucial to getting things done. I usually whip up my meals quickly or just go out to eat, but God seems to be much more into the slow cooker method. God is looking for the long-term results, while we seem to be focused on the immediate. It is seldom that God gives a time frame on His promises, but it is often we internally apply our time frame and then begin to push forward outside the timing of God. I am learning that whenever I feel driven concerning the promises of God, that it is wise to take a step back and slow down. Most of the time I recognize that it is the enemy who is doing the driving trying to take me off course and cause me to stumble. I also believe that my stumbling can even delay the promises of God. When we learn to give the timing over to the Lord and learn to wait on Him things begin to fall into place, and we truly learn to walk by faith, experiencing the supernatural work of God. We can accomplish a lot of things through hard work and determination, and many of these things would be considered good, but then we get the glory. Hard work and determination are positive and important things and when we apply them to the purposes and timing of God then we welcome His supernatural abilities to bless our efforts and miracles start happening and God gets all the glory, and we stay humble.
What are the promises of God anyway? I have done it myself and I have witnessed many go through the Bible and pluck out the many wonderful scriptures of blessings and then automatically apply these Scriptures and their faith to their situation. I don’t want to discourage anyone from doing this, but I do want to point out that it requires very little relationship with God to do this and it is not much different than the worlds self-help, new age message. Also, I haven’t run into anyone yet that is using Scripture and their faith to believe God for them to become a martyr or to invite horrific trials into their lives so that their spirituality and patience will grow. So, things seem to be a little out of balance from my perspective. God’s promises are most definitely found in Scripture: “Such things were written in the Scriptures long ago to teach us. And the Scriptures give us hope and encouragement as we wait patiently for God’s promises to be fulfilled.” Rom 15:4. What I have come to realize is that God’s primary goal for us to enter into a deeper and more intimate relationship with Him. What I am learning to do is to take everything to God in prayer asking Him for a word, directly from Him, concerning my circumstances. Sometimes it is a prayer of desperation, “God I need to hear from you”! His answer may not be exactly what I was hoping for, but it always produces hope within me, since it becomes His direct promise to me. And I know God always comes through with His promises. This requires a very close relationship with God and keeps God at the center of your life. It also requires you to learn definitively how God speaks to you. God speaks to me in a variety of ways, definitely through His Scripture, also through my Pastors messages and proclamations, He speaks to me through dreams, and definitely through a still, small voice usually in the early morning hours as I wake. Eventually your relationship develops to the point that you recognize His voice quite easily. Much like when your mom or a close friend calls you on the phone, she never has to tell you who she is, she knows you know her voice.
On Father’s Day morning in 2019 I woke up in a lot of emotional pain. I had just gone through incredibly difficult times with both my daughters and knew that I wouldn’t be seeing or hearing from either one of them that day and it hurt. Laying there I wondered “what promise do I really have?” Am I going to eventually die in this situation? My heart cried out to God; “please Lord, I need to hear from you!” I visited my present church for the first time that morning and after his message, the Pastor seemed to spontaneously start proclaiming things over the congregation. During this time, he boldly spoke, “and you will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living!” When those words hit my ears, I knew that it was God speaking directly to me answering my hearts cry. My pain was quickly replaced with incredible confidence and joy. For the next several days I told my friends and family members about my new promise from God concerning my children and grandchildren, elated that it was going to happen. For some context, I will tell you that at that time I have not had a conversation with my youngest in years and the only thing that I have heard from her was hate texts and how she was no longer my daughter. Naturally, there was really no way that I could see how things could change, but I knew that God made me a promise and joy filled my heart and I told everyone that would listen because I had no doubt. In my mind I thought nothing would probably change for many years, but I believe that my “believing” triggered something in the spirit realm. And through the wildest of circumstances, just a little over a year later, we began the process of reconciliation and now we have a fun and loving relationship. I don’t believe I’ve seen God’s complete “goodness” yet, but that fact that this miracle has begun so quickly has me continually on cloud nine.
I am not at all into formula’s concerning the things of God, but I do believe in principles. My goal for this blog was to share revelation and principles enabling you to properly “Stand on God’s Promises” and see your God given dreams come true. So, this is my encouragement to you. Take one of your challenging situations to God in prayer. Remember that prayer should be a two-way conversation. Patiently wait on Him to clearly speak to you. Don’t allow your own voice or the voice of the enemy to speak on His behalf. He may not say anything specific until you are ready to receive what he has for you, so figure out how you surrender your will to accept any answer He might give. This is probably the hardest part to genuinely do. Once you have heard your word from God, believe it and tell everyone about it. Speaking it publicly activates the miracle in the Spirit realm which then manifests itself in the natural. Plus, do you really believe it, if you won’t proclaim it? Never put your time frame on His word. Know that you will be tested and tempted to disbelieve. Know that these tests may be in the form of storms where Jesus calls you out onto the waters like he did Peter (Mat 14:27-32). Be brave and don’t be afraid, keep your eyes on Him. Know that in the waiting God is wanting to work on your heart and to draw you closer to him. Always be grateful and make sure you fully enjoy your miracle from God. Let it truly be a tree of life continuing to produce amazing fruit for the rest of your life.