The Process to the Promise

In my younger years, after graduating college, I thought I could take on the world and solve everyone’s problems. After I got slapped down a hundred or so times, I became calloused to all that was around me. I went through a season of self-doubt in myself and God. We may not want to admit it but adulthood has a way of placing us in a box and causing us to think we have insurmountable boundaries and limitations. In that same manner we choose to place God in a box and inform Him He can only move in the ways we approve and/or expect. Can you imagine how things would have gone if the Israelites had chosen to march around that wall six times rather than seven before they began shouting? They would have looked like a bunch of buffoons screaming at a wall while God stood back and said, “Didn’t I say seven?!? Why’d you stop at six?!? I’m not going to honor that!” God may sometimes place, what we consider, ridiculous requests upon us. If we will lay aside pride and our own ideas and assumptions, we may very well experience the miraculous.

Sometimes it only takes a little “childlike faith.” When God speaks, it is a promise-not a prediction. Predictions are forecasts based simply on surrounding facts or opinions. God specializes in the impossible. Just because the forecast calls for doom and gloom doesn’t mean it will happen. I’ve experienced many days of sunshine when our local forecaster called for rain. My God controls the winds and waves. He can speak peace at any moment, and the storms must ceases at His command. A promise bypasses a prediction. No longer are we in a state of what might happen – it’s simply a matter of when. Thus saith the Lord – it will come to pass.

Storms will come and go, but your response will rely on your foundation in Him. For example, if I were to take a pine tree from my back yard and transplant it to the beach onto the shoreline, most likely, at the first strong storm, it will be blown down. Its root system isn’t capable of surviving that environment nor is the sand in which it would be planted. Place a palm tree in that same environment and you have a different story. A hurricane can come through, and the only thing left standing will be that palm tree. Why? Because the roots of the palm tree are like fingers that intertwine with each other and grow not only outward but also downward. Some have been known to grow as deep as 20 to 30 feet easily. Now that’s not to say the portion of the palm tree that weathered the storm may not be slightly bent or physically affected in some way because of the harsh conditions. But it will not be moved.

Not only is God preparing you to weather those storms but also to survive and thrive even in horrible conditions. Where does your hope lie? How will you react to those storms around you? Even more importantly, how will the world see you respond?