No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. Romans 4:20, 21
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No matter what you do in life, you will pursue promises. It’s the way people live. You will set your mind and heart on a raft of promises – things and situations you believe will provide you with the maximum happiness and wellbeing – and everything you do every day of your life will strain toward their realization.
But we can never out-conjure God when it comes to promises. He offers us precious and very great promises – the promises made to Abraham – and invites us to come, by faith in Jesus Christ, and receive the grace of those promises and the fullness of life with God. So how do we lay hold on the promises of God so that we know increasingly this full and abundant life He plans for us?
Paul tells us briefly how we can begin to organize our lives around the promises of God and focus our energies on realizing them more and more, day by day.
First, we need to make sure we understand the promises of God, and see them for as precious and very great as they are. Abraham struggled with this. He kept trying to make God’s promises fit his fleshly experience and expectations. It took many years of waiting on the Lord, listening to Him, and getting additional clarification before Abraham finally understood the enormity of what God was promising. So we too, if we would know these promises, must give ourselves to study, meditation, and waiting on God to expand our vision and understanding, until the greatness and implications of these promises are fixed in our minds and hearts.
Next, we must give glory to God for His promises – praising and thanking Him daily, talking the promises back to Him and exalting Him for such great grace and mercy, rehearsing our plans and visions before Him with gratitude and praise.
As part of this, try to envision, day by day, what your life will look like as you take the next step toward one or another of the promises. For example, Abraham was promised a child. Although he was well advanced in age, and he and Sarah had not had relations for many years, he knew what the “next step” needed to be, and he took it in faith. What will the next step look like as you reach out to bless others, to persuade or influence the ways of things in your world, to trust God for His daily provision, or to grow in His blessings?
The more clearly you can “see” what the promises will look like incrementally and day by day, the easier it will be for you to take the final step, and to act as if those things you have envisioned were already real in your life. Living by the promises day by day we move toward them more and more. Study, praise the Lord, see His promises unfolding in you, then act in the belief that He will do it. This is the way to lay hold on the precious and very great promises of God.
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Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture references are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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Promises
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