September 2015
Dear Friend,
This isn’t actually a bona fide
original letter but I’m thankful that I heard Nancy Dufresne give the following
statement as it opened up some things in me:
Faith will reach into the plan of
God and make preparation for it.
- Nancy Dufresne
If you have been following this
blog for some time, you may have come across a statement I made that the
message of faith in God wasn’t just a teaching to be intellectually understood
but it was a lifestyle that every one of us should live.
In his letter to the Corinthian
church, Paul made the following statement:
2 Corinthians 5:7 (NKJV)
For we walk by faith, not by
sight.
Our faith in God goes beyond what
we can see with our physical eyes and into the future, believing that what He
said and promised concerning us will come to pass. However, we also read in
James’ letter to the church,
James 2:17 (AMP)
So also faith, if it does not
have works (deeds and actions of obedience to back it up), by itself is
destitute of power (inoperative, dead).
Who you and I are today is a
result of what we believed and acted on yesterday. And what we believe and act
on today will change our destiny tomorrow and hereafter. Our faith in God will
give direction to our actions and shape the destiny and quality of life that we
walk out in the years to come.
Without going deeply into the
Greek meanings behind Hebrews 11:3, I’ll use what a friend of mine wrote
concerning it:
Hebrews 11:3 (paraphrased)
by hearing and believing in God’s
word, the ages of time have been shaped by men and women who then brought
unseen purposes into the seen realm.
- Toni Haskell, It’s About Time
History has been made by people who believed the Word and acted on it, making preparation for it. If we look at the life of Noah, we can see how he had faith in God and made preparation for the manifestation of that faith when he built the ark (read Genesis chapters 5 to 7).
From reading the chapter, we find
the following details:
- Noah was around 500 years of age when God commanded
him to build the ark (Genesis
- It took him approximately 100 years to build said ark (Genesis 7:6, he was 600 years old when the Flood took place)
- The Flood happened.
There’s more detail to the story
than that but I wanted to point out the following:
Noah acted on the word he
received from God, that a flood was coming and he was to build an ark to save
not only himself but his wife, three sons and their wives with them, and a
whole bunch of animals.
It took him approximately 100
years to build an ark and he continued building it, based on that one word, a
flood was coming. That's a pretty long time to wait, isn't it? He could have given up at any point in time in between the
start and completion of the ark, thinking that word to be false. He didn’t. He
persevered and kept building it until it was fully completed. Once he finished
building the ark, he and his group went in, God shut the doors and the flood
happened, wiping out almost all of mankind.
Just because you believe you have
a word from God doesn’t mean there's no preparation involved in the process. There
will always be a period of time between the revelation of the promise and the
manifestation of the promise. What we do in between both points will determine
how we end up. There are people who started off well but ended up on the
spiritual junkheap of life because of lack of preparation, and there are people
who ended up well because they took the time to prepare themselves and
consecrate themselves to carry out the plans and purposes of God for their
lives.
Kenneth E. Hagin said it well,
that “preparation time is never wasted time”. So make it a priority to prepare
yourself, believing that what God promised you will come to pass in due time.
Blessings
Ken
