Therefore do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise (Hebrews 10:35-36). Now the just shall live by faith; But if anyone draws back, My soul has no pleasure in him (Hebrews 10:38).
Endurance or patience is an important ingredient of faith. It’s faith and patience that inherits the promises. The Greek word for endurance is hupomeno and it means to remain when under pressure. It’s the ability to keep your chin up when things aren’t going well. It’s the ability to remain joyful and expectant when it looks as though nothing you believe is coming to pass. It’s the ability to remain unmoved and unshaken by circumstances.
The very nature of what faith is makes patience so necessary in the faith fight. Faith is for what you don’t have in the physical realm yet. Faith takes the place of what God has promised you until it arrives in the physical and you can see it. Faith is the substitute for the thing God has promised you until you can physically see or feel it.
The Word promises healing, so you have prayed and exercised your faith. The pain increases and the symptoms worsen. Patience enables you to stand your ground in the tough time. Patience or endurance enables you to look away from the symptom and look at the promise of God, knowing that God is faithful to fulfill His Word.
The faith life is very challenging to the flesh! So many think that walking by faith means you receive instantly, but that is just not true! Abraham waited 25 years for the child of promise to come! And his patience enabled him to keep going strong when the impossibility of what he believed weighed on him.
Faith and patience are the twins of success! Patience keeps you from letting go of your faith! I remember when I was believing God to build our current building. It seemed that obstacles manifested every hour to keep it from happening. I had prayed, and I was believing that I received the answer to my prayer, which was a building being built.
At times I would get so tired of resisting the circumstances that just kept compounding! But it was the hupomeno, the ability to keep on going when the chips are down, that refused to let me quit. I gritted my teeth and praised God for honoring His Word! And you can see the results.
Don’t quit if you’re in a faith battle. Rest in the promises of God. He is faithful that promised. He watches over His Word to make it good. Heaven and earth may pass away, but His Word never will! Allow patience to under gird your faith today. Keep your eyes on God’s promises and not the unmoving circumstance. You will receive if you just don’t quit!
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
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Sometimes you just feel as though there is no light at the end of the tunnel. It's one thing after another and you have not expected instant results and have been patient. You are at the end of your rope and do not want to fight anymore. I'm not sure how you just keep on fighting when you see no end in sight.
ReplyDeleteThis is for the person who commented above.
ReplyDeleteDon't give up! That is exactly what the enemy wants you to do. Most likely because your breakthrough is right around the corner. In my experience, when it gets so tough that I don't want to fight anymore, that is when the the answer or relief comes. Remember what 2 Corinthians 4:8-9 says: We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed—
Also in this world we will have great tribualtion, but be of good cheer for I have overcome the world(don't remember chapter verse at the moment)
Jesus has already won the battle for you. Just stand and do not be moved. Your brothers and sisters will stand with you for we bear each other's burdens.
Just begin to praise Him right now. Especially if you don't feel like it. Make a choice to do it anyway and the enemy will flee. God inhabits the praise of His people. He doesn't even say we have to feel it :)
God bless you!
To Anonymous:
ReplyDeleteBefore you can exercise faith in God, you must have hope. Hope is an expectation that things can be different. Hebrews 6 says that hope is an anchor of the soul. Let me encourage you to first of all go to God's word, and find scriptures where God promises that you'll come through a hard place, and that He will answer prayer. Search my past blogs; I've written on this many times. Then read them over and over; meditating on them by saying them out loud, and letting them go over and over in your mind. After a period of doing this consciously, hope will spring up. Then pray, stand your ground, and verbalize your faith in God and His Word. He has never failed a person who really trusted Him! The key here is that you've got to pay more mental attention to what God's says than what your circumstances tell you mind, your emotions, and your body!
Pastor Mitch