Promises. How and When?

wow! 2012 already? awesome! that means i'm gonna have to add another year to my age. miserable. yet. epic.
there's no way of telling what the new year holds for all of us. that's why i find it a whole lot more easier just to trust God rather than to worry my butt off about something that's not meant to be in my control in the first place. haha!
but one thing we can be sure of  is that a new year would mean new challenges ahead. some epic. some not so epic. but all in every way significant. i've been thinking about this for some time now so i made an equation that helps put everything together.


New Challenges = New God-willed lessons to be learned
 
New God-willed lessons = Better man / woman of God

but what i'm gonna be bloggin' about is something a whole lot different (i hope it relates one way or another)

getting to know God has been awesome all the way and yet somehow, i'm still far from close to all He truly is. thus, the awesome journey continues. anyway, at one point of my life (probably before physical adulthood), i came to know God as Someone Who is undivided when it comes to His Word. what i'm trying to say is that God is completely faithful in everything He says. what He says He will do. really does make sense since it's impossible for Him to lie and stuff. the bible tells us of how every word that goes forth from His mouth will NOT return to Him void but will accomplish the things it was sent out to do in the first place. awesome right? that means every promise is a sure 'yes' and not an 'urm...maybe..we'll see how things are'.

but how and when is a different story.

so the other day at church an amazing woman of God testified on how He (when i say 'He' i mean God) progressively brought His promise over her life to pass. it was amazing to see how God fulfilled His promise. but it was what she said next that rocked my world (emphasis added). it was one of those moments in life when God uses the testimonies of others to get you back up on your feet and back on track. so this wonderful person (the lady i mean) said that it's not just about believing that God will do it but it's about partnering with Him every step of the way. it's not about just laying back and expecting God to bring everything on a silver platter to your doorstep but it's about taking the required steps and making the necessary sacrifices along the way. sometimes, the best of promises come with the most painful of sacrifices. 

the awesome testimony was followed by an awesome sermon by pastor and it was called 'from barrenness to fruitfulness'. when i first heard the title i was like, "hey..this could be of good use to me since i feel pretty barren at the moment". you see..i was at that place again where i kinda lost sight of God's will over my life and i was living for my desires instead of His. i was constantly being a pain by simply ignoring His presence and not letting Him be who He wants to be in my life. ahhh. you get the point.

so i was one of those people who were just sitting back and not doing anything i was suppose to. forgetting that there IS a great promise that has been made over my life. practically i was going through a period of barrenness.

there were many characters in the bible who went through a period of barrenness.
one of them included Abraham. God promised Abraham that he will be a father of many nations.
like i said, a promise is a promise but how and when it's gonna be fulfilled is a different story. 
So Sarah (Abraham's wife) happened to be barren. and i guess she got tired of waiting so she asked Abraham to go lay with her maid Hagar instead and have a child by her.

i guess we all have a little bit Sarah in ourselves. the moment we don't see God's promise come to pass in our self-appointed time, we panic and begin to do stuff our way out of God's will. 

God works in His own timing and His own timing alone. 2Peter 3:8 states that with the Lord a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day. i had to learn this the hard way. haha.
in our period of barrenness we must not lose sight of what God has promised and CONTINUE to commit ourselves to our faithful Creator and nevertheless CONTINUE to do good. just like Hannah. despite being barren and all she continued to seek God and pray.


we tend to reason with God despite knowing at the back of our minds somewhere that God will always turn out right in the end. let's face it, reasoning leads to doubt. so it's up to us to set aside our worldly mindsets in order to make way for complete and undivided trust in His love. i guess the reason why some of the israelites didn't get to set foot on the promise land was because they constantly challenged God with their complaints again and again and refused to acknowledge the fact that it was God who preserved them and brought them that far in the first place. don't let your barren thoughts get the better of you and hinder you from experiencing God's version of fruitfulness in your life (and trust me, His version is always the best there is).  
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