• God of Promises or Promises of God?
It is faith in the God of promises rather than in the promises of God, for when they delay and have not come to pass at our timing, obedient faith still says, “it shall come to pass.”
— M.A. Williams
Posted on April 6, 2016, in Pearls of Wisdom and tagged delays, faith, God of promises, God of Promises or Promises of God?, God's timing, Mark Anthony Williams, obedient faith, Pearls of Wisdom, promises of God, timing. Bookmark the permalink. 13 Comments.
Shade of the Moriah Tree
Shade of the Moriah Tree 
These are words I have to hear but are hard to hear at the same time. I hate waiting, but I know it’s always worth it. Hebrews 6:12 says, “Imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.” We often leave out the patience part.
Jen, it is hard, extremely hard… I know, believe me I know. God sees you. In that waiting we are being changed; something is taking place that we cannot see, but in time we will see it all come together in ways that will take our breath away. He really does all things well and I say that in the midst of the hardest years I’m going through. God really draw near and so encourage you in the waiting that are not wasted years.
So true…nothing is wasted & powerful words will come from our hardest seasons. Reminds me of these words from Amy Carmichael…
“Thou shalt have words,
But at this cost, that thou must first be burnt,
Burnt by red embers from a secret fire,
Scorched by fierce heats and withering winds that sweep
Through all thy being, carrying thee afar
From old delights. Doth not the ardent fire
Consume the mountain’s heart before the flow
Of fervent lava? Wouldst thou easefully,
As from cool, pleasant fountains, flow in fire?
Say, can thy heart endure or can thy hands be strong
In the day that I shall deal with thee?
“For first the iron must enter thine own soul,
And wound and brand it, scarring awful lines
Indelibly upon it, and a hand
Resistless in a tender terribleness
Must thoroughly purge it, fashioning its pain
To power that leaps in fire,
Not otherwise, and by no lighter touch,
Are fire-words wrought.”
Words with incredible weight from Amy Carmichael; haven’t read a lot of her writings yet. Iron entering the soul – that’s what God does through the blasts in life. It is the one thing He is after: the likeness of His Son.
Reminds of the words Oswald Chambers would quote from Lord Alfred Tennyson:
“That life is not as idle ore,
But iron dug from central gloom,
And heated hot with burning fears,
And dipt in baths of hissing tears,
And batter’d with the shocks of
doom to shape and use.”
Patience is the hardest thing for us to develop–
We have to wait for it it. There’s irony for you.
I can attest with all the trials and troubles we have had, our patience has developed immensely, but still, when a circumstance arises, the old ugly head of impatience rises from the depths of our hearts and tries to get us off of our game.
I keep reminding myself of the Scripture that tells us how to resist the devil (sin, sin-man…etc). We are told to submit to God. If we submit to God’s way, timing and decisions (regardless how hard they are to understand), then the devil will flee from us. It’s hard to attack a child when he’s snuggled into the big, strong arms of his Daddy. :)
So true. Too often we talk of how by His wounds we’re healed, and we think it’s immediate and we’re destined for a pain-free life. We forget we’re called to be like Christ, which means we will also be wounded, and others will find healing when we testify of how God walked with us in the midst of the fire. As the body of Christ, I think we each bear a portion of the sufferings of the world and through these sufferings we become like Christ who sympathizes with our every weakness. We’re able to offer genuine hope and encouragement to others because we’ve walked through the same valleys. Tried in the fire but coming forth as gold.
I work with steel on a daily basis and the truth of how through many tribulations, we will enter the kingdom of heaven rings true over and over again.
It’s only through heat, pounding, quenching and pounding again can I turn a raw piece of steel into something beautiful.
We can accept this in almost every situation in life from building muscle to having a baby. It all takes pain, pressure and sacrifice. But it’s funny when it comes to God, we have the tendency to think it all should be easy.
Nothing’s easy with God. When we finish climbing that horrendous mountain and think we have time to breath we see yet another one that’s even taller. This is why submission needs to be our bosom friend, and surrenderedness has to be kindred spirit.
What a powerful picture of how God works with us. It’s amazing how He speaks wisdom in so many ways and through the humblest of things, even through a piece of steel. If only we listen.
God reveals Himself to us in so many ways, but we are too “mature” and intelligent to see them. Ask any child, if this world was created by a series of trial and error, and they will look at you confusedly. Ask a prof from university, and he will smile and nod his so called intelligent head.
We are told that God has placed His witness in every man’s heart, and we (the world) is without excuse. This goes for His children as well. How dare we worry and doubt?! His inner witness speaks to us on a daily basis through our hearts, others, nature, circumstance…if only we’d listen.
The most amazing thing is how patient He is with us. He puts up with so much. What grace! What love!
Exactly. How many people have faith in prayer or faith in faith? I’ve heard people talk and you can tell they have put their faith in their “words of faith”, rather than in a sovereign God.
I hate it when I hear people say that prayer is the most powerful force on earth. Grrrrr……no wonder God shakes this earth in anger.
Faith is when you pursue God despite circumstances remaining the same and answers to prayer are delayed. That’s when we start to seriously trust God’s character – the God of promises. It’s immature faith when prayers are ‘answered’ immediately without testing of long years of delay. And the promises of God?? There are seasons when your desires are turned to ashes so that you desire Him rather than your own blessings. God is no genie and that is one of the massive problems in today’s Christianity is such a perspective. No wonder Paul states to be renewed in the spirit of our minds. Today’s concept of God is so other than being Spirit-led and it’s in the fires where God graciously deals with us. Thank God for His mercy.
For sure my friend! And I find another problem with Christianity today (and this goes for false converts and genuine Christians as well), is we expect God to be okay with our lifestyles, choices and decisions. It’s like He’s supposed to have the same desires for our lives as we do. Our motives are always sinful, no matter how sincere they might appear to be. We want sin. We want fun. We want entertainment. God wants our best, no matter how long it takes and how much it hurts. His motives are genuine, ours are selfish. How many times have we looked to the Bible for something that backed up our beliefs in something? Human nature has the innate ability to draw God down into the manure pile of our selfish wants and whims, instead of allowing Him to raise us up to His level of holiness because it would cost too much!
Thank God we’re ultimately miserable until He is first in our lives and when we stray from that His goodness and mercy pursues us until we’re back on the straight and narrow. Painful but invaluable lessons. Through many sufferings/hardships we must enter the kingdom of God. The child of God will state, “It is good that I have been afflicted” for how it drives out folly from our hearts. When we’re not demanding our way or desires we’re getting into the stride of God; getting to know His heart and that’s when we can say, desirably, with John the Baptist, “He must increase [which inevitably involves my radical decrease].”