God is not a man, that He should lie,
nor a son of man, that He should change his mind.
Does He speak and then not act?
Does He promise and not fulfill?
Numbers 23:19
We have all had people
in our life at one time or another who have made promises to us and even though
made with the best of intentions, they failed to do what they said they would.
It can be especially painful if that person was a parent. Often it is these experiences
which inhibit our ability to trust God. When I say “promises” I am not
referring to the whole written word of God, although His word is forever
settled in heaven and the absolute truth, I am talking about what God speaks to
us personally from His written word to our hearts through
specific passages of scripture, or something He says through another person
concerning us that upon hearing it causes our faith to rise because we bear
witness with what is being spoken. Trusting
that He will do what He says is essential to walking by faith and faith is
essential to walking in obedience. The
Word tells us that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word (the rhema or
utterance) of God. Faith is an action word, not a meditative word. Faith walks
in accordance to what God has spoken no matter what the circumstances look
like. Faith doesn’t deny circumstances like some have done in the past when the
word of faith movement went off in the ditch and people would walk around
hacking there heads off denying how they felt in their bodies because they
(erroneously) believed acknowledging it was a denial of their faith that
through Jesus they were healed.
One thing I have
learned over the years, when God speaks or breaths into you through His Word,
come what may, if you will mix what you hear with faith nothing in the natural
will be able to steal it from you. But often what we stand on isn’t a word God
has breathed into our spirit, but a passage of scripture we have grabbed to
keep from being tossed to and fro or something someone else says may be
the truth, but has not been made our truth.
As I have walked
through some of the most trying circumstances the past few years I have come to
realize delightfully that when God speaks it has absolutely nothing to do with
what is going on in the natural. His ability to perform His word isn’t altered
by the severity of circumstances. When God says He is going to heal you it
matters not whether you have the least of symptoms or go to deaths door, He is
going to do what He says. He speaks according to His eternal power and
unchanging nature and character. But how often does our faith waiver when the
situation gets worse, which most often it does. Or He speaks when we are in a
financial crisis and things go from bad to worse and we start to doubt what He
has said. Because God is holy, He can't violate His word. God and His word
are one. Oh, how that needs to be true of us as well.
There is an account in
Mark 2 where Jesus is being harassed because when Jesus saw their faith,
He said to the paralytic, "Son your sins are forgiven you". The
scribes accused him of blasphemy. Jesus’ response was, “Which is easier to say,
'your sins be forgiven', or to say, “Arise, take up your bed and
walk?" You see it wasn’t a matter of natural circumstances but of the
authority of the one who was speaking. His authority doesn’t change.
He has it all according
to Matthew 28:18. Whether He exercises it to heal you of a cold, or to raise
you from a death bed, His word will not return to Him void without
accomplishing what it was sent for.
OR 
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