Churches are closed everywhere as you know, and I hadn’t been to our church since before Easter, but by the nudge of the Holy Spirit, I found myself there yesterday. I barely remembered my security code it had been that long since I had opened up.
I set about doing what I had arrived for, and in setting up for that, I just happened to be fumbling through a bunch of discarded books on the floor. I felt led to look through the titles. It was at this point the one book in particular took my eye. I pulled it out and began to thumb through it. I literally haven’t been able to put it down since.
It appears God had me at the church for an entirely different purpose to what I thought!
It isn’t a famous book and it hasn’t been written by a famous author, but it is God’s message for me today. And I’m sure you’ll relate with this topic that I will discuss now.
Think about the analogy of pregnancy. A pregnant woman has not had her baby yet, but she knows her baby will come. Our hopes are just the same.
For some strange reason our hopes don’t seem real until they’re realised, but the ironic thing with that is that hope is only relevant before the realisation. Once a hope is realised it is no longer a hope. Too many of us give up on the dreams of our hearts, because we lose touch with hope that they can be realised.
Perhaps deeper down inside us, are prophecies buried so deep that long ago we lost touch with the promise. But in all reality, God has laid up these promises in our hearts long ago.
These are not the kinds of promises you find linked to Bible verses, though there are promises from scripture also.
These are the kinds of promises that God made to US, alone, perhaps very early in our lives, or maybe even only 10 years ago, but they are unique promises for our life, nonetheless. And we know that God keeps his promises, always. Our problem is we lack faith.
Like the pregnant woman, if the promise remains pregnant inside us, and we do our bit to support the promise, God will see it through without any shadow of a doubt, just as the baby is eventually born. We just need to believe.
And, guess what. Belief makes not only the process of promise fulfilment likelier to happen, it also makes the journey more joyful and peaceful. And, who’s not up for more peace and joy?
HERE’S THE THING... you know this is a reality for you. Nestled deep within, eternity’s call echoes—it’s how your life is supposed to have eternal significance in THIS life.
We are the only ones who will get in the way of the fulfilment of these promises. And all we have is now, the present moment to work, and the rest of our lifetimes to diligently and faithfully pursue what God has laid up in our hearts, for us, to do. Nobody else can do it, and if we don’t do it, maybe nobody ever will do it.
The day of delivery of that promise, when it breaks through into the fullness of manifestation, we will see what has always been a reality — as a prophecy initially and then the fulfilment — but a reality all the same.
Two imperatives remain:
1. Will we seek to go back and to reconnect with those prophecies of promise that God gave us in the first place? Truly, he has laid these up in every single one of our hearts, as we work out our salvation (see Ephesians 2:1-10). Now is the time to do this work of reconnecting with the divine promises made for OUR life.
2. Once we have reconnected with that thing or things that God had laid up for us at and in his appointed time, it is over to us to be faithful as God is faithful, to be expectant, because we know that our Lord does not fail in meeting the commitments that God has made. We only have this one life, with its limited days. So, will we commit to the work that God has predestined for us to do?
Oh, the title of the book is Those Who Expect Nothing Are Never Disappointed by Steve Sampson, (Renew Books: California, 2000).
Photo by Zhifei Zhou on Unsplash
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