WHEN PROMISES BECOME MINE
Christine Wyrtzen
Our promise is well tried, and your servant loves it. Psalm 119:140
The Word is not some new Word that has no track record. When I stake my life on God’s promises, I am doing so with full knowledge of the ways it has been tried and tested down through the centuries. No one ever reached the end of their life and said they were sorry they trusted God because it had been in vain. In fact, just the opposite. The longer God’s children walk with Him, the more grand their endorsement. Most will pay with their lives to honor the One who has never failed them, never lied to them, and always kept His promises. With humility, they admit that such love was undeserved.
Since all that is true, I ask myself why I’m not living more confidently at times. I find myself kept up at night by things I fear. I preach to myself at 3:00 a.m. and say, “You know God will be faithful to take care of this! Why are you churning about it?” I know His promises are true, yet fear can still get the best of me.
I do believe that the answer to that question is that the severity of my faith tests escalate as I mature. God allows a trial, then I'm called by the Spirit to press in and stand in the Word and its promises. If I pass the test, the trial eases, and should that particular trial come again, I'll know how to handle it. The problem is, it probably won’t come again just like the first time. What comes will be a new challenge that will test the fabric of my faith at the next level.
God is all about growing my faith. It won’t grow without customized testing in the areas where I faint, not where someone else faints. Each of us wears armor with chinks in places specific to us and our story. I may know His promises intellectually but they really aren’t mine until I’ve stood in them and clung to them for dear life through the graduated stages of life’s problems. I can know that Abraham found God’s promises to be true but that doesn’t make them true for me until I also push through fear and uncertainty to stand in them.
No guilt today for where I faint. Fainting provides the doorway for faith.
I can be so hard on myself. Abraham battled his thoughts and fears all the way up the mountain with Isaac. I battle my fear, at every stage, with Your Word. In Jesus' name, Amen
Originally published Wednesday, 26 September 2018.
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