Obtaining Promises

Obtaining the Promises of God

We have been talking about the promises of God. I love the promises of God. I even like the word. It is so pregnant with promise. God calls us to a life of promise. A couple of months ago we were in the promised land. I think it was Pope John Paul II who went to Israel about twenty years ago and said to the prime minister that the Jewish people need to remember Israel is a holy land for three great religions—Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. The prime minister nodded and said you are right, but the pope needs to remember that Israel is a promised land to only one nation. God gave the people of Israel a promised land, but He has given us a land of promises. God has called you to a land of promise. God has called you to a life of promise. Religion has pushed it off until one day when we die, one day when Jesus returns, one day in the millennium. One of the saddest truths out there is how many promises of God we miss in this life. There are things God has for you in this life. I want the things Jesus paid for. If He bought and paid for something for me, I want it. We are going to have hardship in life—persecution, all of those things. Yet He calls us to a life where we obtain promises.

The Bible Pairs Obtain with Promise

I have never quite noticed this before, but how many times the Bible uses the word obtain and promise in the very same verse. Hebrews 6:12 says, “Do not become sluggish, but imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises” (NKJV). Do not become lazy, but imitate those who through faith and patience obtain promises. Hebrews 6:15: And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. Hebrews 8:6: He has obtained a more excellent ministry, inasmuch as He is also Mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises. Hebrews 9:15: And for this reason He is the Mediator of the new covenant, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance. Hebrews 10:36: For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise. Hebrews 11:33: who through faith subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises. Second Peter 1:4: by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature. Galatians 3:14: that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

God wants you to obtain promises. He does not want you simply to read promises. He does not simply want you standing on the promises of God. It is a great hymn—I love it—but it is not enough to simply stand on your Bible. God wants these promises to be materialized, to be real in your life, to be something you actually experience. I do not only want to sing about them and talk about them, though I do want to sing about them and talk about them. I do not want to look at them and admire them. I want to live them. I think I have a debt to the people who look at my life, and so do you, that they may look at our life. They may not believe in the Jesus we believe in, but they should see in our lives the testimony that we obtain promises.

It literally means pursue. Another version says imitate. It is not wrong to imitate somebody. Just choose the right person. Jerry Savelle, when he was a young preacher, somebody came to him and said, you are just copying everything Kenneth Copeland says. He thought about it and went back to the person. He said, you are absolutely right. It is working for him and it is working for me. He said, I am following somebody who has obtained promises. Of course, he was following somebody else. It is not wrong to imitate somebody. Just choose the right person. The Bible says become a follower. Follow a leader who has obtained promises. If somebody wants you to follow them, you have a right to go to them and say, I am willing to follow you, but show me your testimony. Show me that what you are teaching actually works in the real world and produces results. Show me what promises you have obtained—not just talked about.

We are called to a life of promise. I am not saying you will not live through pain, persecution, suffering. In fact, you will probably get it more when you dare to believe God. But you will get breakthrough. God calls us to break through into a life of promise that is not just for us, it is for others around us. To be honest, we should pass these things on to the next generation and then to their generation. Your kids should take your ceiling and make it their floor and go further with it. No good dad goes to a football game or soccer game and gets jealous if his son or daughter is doing well. He is cheering them on. That is my son, that is my daughter. What Satan loves to do is trap us into this lifestyle where we are on functional mode, just barely getting through. We make it through life with enough money not to crash before we die. We make it through by paying our bills. It becomes like the goal of our life is to just make it through and pay what we need to. You should pay your way and do all those things, but you were called to more than that. You are called to more than pay your mortgage and put gas in your car. You are called to change this world. You are called to leave an inheritance that will not pass away when you have. You are called to leave something spiritually, and I would even say in the natural realm, that you pass on to others and they do something with. You get to look down from heaven and see. I want to see my great-great-great-great-great-great grandkids walking with God. Can you imagine looking down from heaven and seeing generations of people, and you set things in motion? Can I challenge some of you? The Lord said to me last year, write books that your great-great grandchildren will read. Can I tell you the same thing? Why not write? Everybody should write the life story. I wonder how many of us, if somebody came and said, I found a book that your great-great grandfather wrote, would you like to read it? You would pay a lot of money. You would read it in a day. We are called to a life of promise.

Three Stages We Walk Through

It would be easy if we just read the promises of God, prayed, used our faith, confessed, and they all instantly happened. What most of us have been through, though, is experiences which taught us that God does not always answer His promises. Most of us have lived through experiences where we prayed, something did not happen, and especially what we Protestant evangelicals do is invent excuses to explain away why this did not happen and that did not happen. When I first met Leah, I had known her for about two or three weeks and we were going out on a date at a little shopping center nearby where the church was. We were having lunch together and Leah said something to me along the lines that every prayer I have ever prayed, God answered. I said, will you marry me? I am not dumb. Follow those who obtain promises—marry one of them. Later that afternoon, Leah called me as she was driving and she apologized. She said, I just remembered a prayer I prayed that never got answered. I said, what was it? She said, when I was a little girl, I asked Jesus for a pink bicycle and never got one. Of course, I started being all spiritual: In the mighty wisdom of God, He knew that if you had had a bike, you would have had an accident. I think I said something like, God always answers prayer, but sometimes He says no. She said, what do you find that in—the book of Mormon? Because it is not in the Bible. We had our first argument—first of many. Half an hour later she called me back and she was crying. She drove back to her parents’ house, parked the car, and outside the house was a box with her name on it with a brand new pink bike in a box. At the time she was about 22. She did not need a kid’s pink bike. But God still remembered His promises. God remembers His promises.

There are three stages we go through if we are going to obtain promises. There is often a baby stage where it is really easy to get your prayers answered when you are a brand new baby Christian. Nobody has ever told them that it does not work. Baby Christians do not know that God does not answer promises. They have a seriously naive faith. About three or four days ago I was in the UK and I had a flashback. I was in a town where I grew up and I walked through a shopping area. I literally remembered an experience when I had been a Christian for about six months. When I was a baby Christian, I did not think it was possible for a Christian to be sick. It was naive. It was probably silly, but it was so real to me. Jesus is a healer—how could any Christian be sick? For the first six months of my Christian life, I could not believe a Christian could be sick. Nobody had ever taught me otherwise. Then I remember that day, six months later, meeting my youth pastor. He had not been in church that weekend, and he saw me. He was like, oh, Graham, I was sick as a dog, terrible cold. I walked away devastated. Suddenly I thought, well, if he gets sick, what hope do I have? The next morning I woke up sick. There is something great about being a baby Christian when you do not know anything. That is the time to get your prayers answered when you are a little baby and you have not worked anything out.

There is a second stage we go through and none of us really like this second stage. It is called the trying of your faith. Most of us do not live forever in the land where we pray and it happens and it is wonderful. After a while we begin to grow. We come into this teenage stage where you pass some exams. All of us are going to go through a season of life where we believe things from God’s word, and yet they do not seem to work. Nobody likes this, but it is true. If you are a Christian, sooner or later you are going to find yourself in the zone where you have good teaching and Bible promises and they do not work. You go through this no man’s land, your faith is put on trial and is tested, and nobody likes it when they are being tested. Most people cannot deal with the pain of something not happening. They solve the faith problem by backing off and saying, I will just manage my own life. I love Jesus. I am going to heaven one day. I will not get hurt, because I will never try to believe for anything anyway. A lot of people do not see healings happen in their life because they tried it and it did not work. They did it a few times and they are like, I cannot deal with this. They back off.

God’s best is not that we live in the baby thing where we pray and miracles happen instantly. He wants us to go through those trials and come into a third zone where we prove this stuff. We live a life of promise and we are seeing testimonies that materialize, we are seeing pink bikes, we are seeing things happen in our life, but not because we are baby, but because our faith has been tried and tested and proved. Then we come to a place of promotion where the Lord says, in that area where I have tested you, you do not need to be tested anymore. God wants to test your faith and then bring you to that place of maturity. That is where I want to live for the rest of my life.

The Testing of Your Faith Produces Patience

James is the brother of Jesus. Imagine you are James, and Jesus is your elder brother. Imagine having a perfect elder brother. Imagine having a sinless elder brother who never got anything wrong. Do you remember those little bracelets they had about twenty-five, thirty years ago—WWJD, what would Jesus do? But Joseph and Mary made those for all of the brothers. Every time James did not tidy his room—well, Jesus tidied his room. Jesus was never late for dinner. Jesus ate all of his vegetables. Can you imagine you are James? If I was James, would you not just get a little bit annoyed with Jesus—like perfect, never sins, never does anything wrong. I do not know this, and I do not want to add to the Bible, but when we read the gospels, we do not see Joseph anymore. We see Mary, we see the brothers, we see Jesus. Where is Joseph? I think he was probably dead. My point is, imagine you are James, and to some sense the head of the household, your elder brother becomes like the male head. He is watching Jesus all the time. James, before Calvary, never connected the dots. He thought his brother was weird, but special. Yet James, on the day of Pentecost, gets born again, gets baptized in the Holy Spirit. Suddenly he knows his brother in a whole new way. Suddenly my brother was the creator of heaven and earth. My brother was God in the flesh. I can see James going back and thinking, oh, wow, I want to revisit all of those memories. How did he live? How did he act? What can I learn that the other disciples just saw him in his public ministry? I saw him putting bread on the table. I saw him walking. I saw him bleeding. That is why when James writes an epistle, it is a really different epistle. James says a lot about the tongue. James has wisdom that the body of Christ needs.

As written in James 1:2-4, “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing” (NKJV). James says when you go into a trial—he does not say if you go into a trial. He says when. You are going to go through trials. If you do not know you are going to go through trials, you will be surprised when you do. If you do not know, Satan will lie about them when you are in them. Too many people go through a trial and then think God is mad at them, He has deserted them, they do not know what is happening. If we know something is going to happen, we can prepare for it. James says the testing of your faith. Notice he does not say trials produce faith. Trials do not produce faith. Sometimes trials produce bitter, angry, hurt people. Trials do not produce faith. The word produces faith. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. What trials produce is tested faith, purified faith, faith that comes through the other side. Let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. Let endurance and steadfastness and patience have full play and do a thorough work, that you may be perfectly and fully developed in all areas with no defects, lacking in nothing. God’s plan for you is that you would be developed, you would be mature. That is what the word perfect means. It means somebody who has come to maturity, and that you would lack nothing. I want to lack nothing. I will take that. I want to be mature. I want to be whole and entire.

As written in James 1:5, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him” (NKJV). You are talking about trials and now he is talking about wisdom. If we ask God for wisdom about anything, will He give us wisdom? Absolutely. But I think James is connecting wisdom with the trial. I think James is saying when you are going through a trial, instead of saying, God, get me out of here, what we should be praying is, Lord, give me wisdom about what is actually going on right here. Lord, I want your perspective. It is not just general wisdom. It is wisdom about the trial. When you are trying to believe God for a promise, it is not happening, and then all hell breaks loose. Seek God for wisdom. When you are in a trial, ask God for wisdom about what you should do.

Seven Keys to Understand Tests and Trials

Here are seven keys to help you understand tests and trials. Number one, you will go through them. Your faith is going to be tested. You are going to get to that place where you believe something great and then it does not work. All of us are going to go through that. Do not throw your books away. What is really happening when you are being tested is external pressure comes at your life so you will let go of the word of God. That is what Satan wants. The answer is to do the opposite. Hold on to it tighter than anything you have ever done and say, God, You have said this.

Number two, God does not send you tests because He is mad at you. He sends you tests because He loves you and He wants you to grow. Every test is an opportunity to move into a new place of your inheritance in Christ Jesus. We should look at tests through that lens. I am going to go through something now, but I am going to arrive with a testimony of God’s faithfulness.

Number three, when you are in that place where you are getting God’s promises and everything is great, most of us do not have an emotional memory of what it is like to be in a test. When you are going through a test, you do not feel great, you do not feel God is real, you do not feel He is faithful. Most of us erase those negative emotions once we are out the other side. When we are in that place again, the biggest influence is the emotion of the thing we are going through. It is very hard to separate yourself from your emotions and reconnect with your faith. If you know in advance that I am going to go through something, and I know that I am not going to feel it when I go through it, you can decide in advance—this is how I will react. I am not going to react emotionally to what I feel. I am going to come back to God’s word. I am going to count it all joy. I am going to worship the Lord. I am going to say, God, You are good, and You will never fail Your word. If we decide in advance what our response will be, then we will react accordingly.

Number four, the word will test you. As written in Psalm 105:19, “Until the time that his word came to pass, the word of the Lord tested him” (NKJV). God gave Joseph a word, and it was a true word. It came from God, but the word tested him. Allow God’s word to test you. Do not let go of it. You can choose—am I going to accept all of these circumstances, what I see, smell, feel, taste, what other people say, or am I just going to say, I believe God? You are going to go through a trial of your faith where your faith is tested, and that word God gave you will test you. Do not throw that word away.

Number five, how long does a test last? Until you pass the test. If God wants you to go through a test, fast track it—pass it quickly. When you are going through a test, stop wondering why. Your wonder is not that good, and Satan will suggest erroneous false ideas. Do not listen to Satan. Say, Lord, give me wisdom. What do you want me to do? How do I get out of it? There are tests that some people go through that only last an hour. There are other people who go through the same tests and it lasts years. Many Christians die in a test. God will never promote you from a test just because He loves you. You can die in the middle of that test. Say, Lord, what do you want to do in me? What do you want to change in me? What do you want to deposit in me? What do you want to remove from me? Go to the Lord and say, Lord, give me wisdom. Show me what You want me to do. He will give. He will not upbraid. He will give you the plan to get out of that test.

Number six, when you obtain the promise, take the promise and turn it into a lifestyle. Build your faith in that area where you keep pressing it and you keep taking ground and you establish a stronghold of promise in your land. It is yours to stay in for the rest of your life. It is yours to prove, it is yours to have. There are some things in my life I have allowed the Lord to test me on, and now it is like you can do this anytime you want. Do you remember the first time you spoke in tongues? You were terrified. The second you started, Satan jumped on your shoulder, said, that is not real. You are making that up. But some of you did not shut down. You kept doing it. After a time, Satan left for a better time and never found one. Right now you can speak in tongues anytime, anywhere, any place. It is yours to do. The Lord wants to lead us into a place of inheritance where we have proved our faith. We know in whom we believed. We are fully persuaded. It is a great thing to come to a place where you can believe for some things and your heart rate does not go up. I have seen God do this again and again and again, and He will do it again this time.

Number seven, you are going to go through tests. You cannot get to the promised land without walking through some sand. You are not going to step into the promises of God without going through a season where it seems like they do not work and Satan and your emotions are screaming at you saying, this is not real. Give it up. You are going to go through that thing. When you are in that thing, you are going to feel like giving up. That is not wrong. That is not sin. Just do not listen to your feelings. Do not believe what you feel. Stand there in the midst of that trial and say, I do not feel this, I feel like giving up, I do not feel like anything, but I believe God. It will be even as He told me. I am going to pass this test. I am going to let the word test me.

As written in Deuteronomy 8:3, “So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord” (NKJV). God led you through the desert to humble you, to test you, and to reveal what was in your heart. God always knows what is in our heart. The problem is we do not know what is in our heart until we are being tested.

Lord, I just thank You and I bless You. I pray for anybody who is walking through a test today. I pray grace, grace, grace. If anybody is feeling discouraged, I pray the comfort of the Holy Spirit upon them. I pray they will know the everlasting arms underneath. I take authority and break off any lie that You have deserted them, You do not care about them, You have given up on them, You are mad at them. Let us not discern Your love for us by our feelings, but rather by Your word. Whatever season we are in—baby season, testing season, or place of maturity—I pray that we will take some life decisions today, that when I go through the valley of the shadow of death, I will not build a house there—I will keep walking. You are with me, Your rod and Your staff comfort me. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. If anybody is walking through a trial, give them wisdom. Give them a plan of action. Do that supernaturally, do that in a dream, do that through a godly friend. If somebody has been walking through something for five years, let them be out of it in five days—show them the exit strategy, show them the way out. Work in us that which pleases You. Let us pass tests quickly, and let us be a people of testimony, people who proved the promises of God. Let our lives show to this dying world a God who keeps His word, a God who is a yes and amen God, a promise maker and a promise keeper. I speak Your blessing over every life in Jesus’ name.

Selah.

Scriptures for Study: Hebrews 6:12, Hebrews 6:15, Hebrews 8:6, Hebrews 9:15, Hebrews 10:36, Hebrews 11:33, 2 Peter 1:4, Galatians 3:14, James 1:2-4, James 1:5, Psalm 105:19, Deuteronomy 8:3, Romans 10:17, 1 Peter 1:6-7, Acts 27:25, Hebrews 11:13, Hebrews 11:39, Galatians 3:29, Ephesians 1:3, 2 Corinthians 1:20, Numbers 23:19, Isaiah 55:11, Jeremiah 1:12, Joshua 21:45, 1 Kings 8:56

10 Questions for Reflection

1. What promise from God are you currently believing for that has not yet materialized?
2. Have you ever experienced the “baby stage” of faith where prayers seemed to be answered instantly—how did that season shape you?
3. In what area of your life has your faith been tested, and what did the trial reveal about your heart?
4. When you feel discouraged in a test, how do you distinguish between your emotions and the truth of God’s word?
5. Who is someone you know who has obtained promises—how does their testimony encourage you to imitate them?
6. How can asking for wisdom about a trial change your response instead of simply asking to be rescued from it?
7. What practical step can you take today to decide in advance how you will respond when the next test comes?
8. In what specific area has God tested you, and have you come through to a place where that promise is now a lifestyle?
9. How might your children or the next generation benefit from seeing you obtain promises rather than just talk about them?
10. Where do you need to humble yourself under God’s hand so He can raise you up in a new place of inheritance?