“So now wrap your heart tightly around the hope that lives within us,
Knowing that God always keeps his promises!
Hebrews 10:23 TPT
We serve a God who fulfills promises. What He has promised you, He will bring to pass. But we all know that there is a middle between when the promise is made and when it is fulfilled and that middle is filled with trials, tests, and difficult challenges. I like to use another name for the middle stuff – crucible.
What’s your attitude like as you are in the crucible?
Have you got an attitude of faith and fully expectant that God is with you in the fire or have you lost hope? Have you given up on God because of the intensity of the fire?
I want to encourage you to not lose heart and to keep holding on to the Lord in the midst of the fire.
He will bring to pass what He has promised you. He is with you in the fire because He loves you and because he has a promise to fulfill. He will never abandon you because He is faithful.
I think of Joseph who was given an amazing promise. But instead of everything going smoothly until the promise was fulfilled, he was shipped off to a foreign land as a slave. In fact, he nearly lost his life. Things went terribly wrong for him but in the midst of the fire we see something amazing,
“Now Joseph had been taken down to Egypt. Potiphar, an Egyptian who was one of Pharaoh’s officials, the captain of the guard, bought him from the Ishmaelites who had taken him there. The Lord was with Joseph so that he prospered, and he lived in the house of his Egyptian master.”
Genesis 39:1, 2 NIV
“But while Joseph was there in the prison, the Lord was with him; he showed him kindness and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden.”
Genesis 39:20 NIV
God was with him in the crucible, in the fire. He never left him. And it’s the same with you and me. God is with you in the fire. He has not abandoned you no matter how intense the fire is. The trials and the tests and the difficult challenges have a purpose.
“Count it all joy, my brothers when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”
James 1:2 NLT
The trials and the tests strengthen your faith. Through each trial and test your faith is getting stronger and stronger. The Word actually tells us to be joyful when trials come our way.
So as you go through the fire know that God is with you and there is a very important work happening in you – the strengthening of your faith in God.
Like I said earlier, God will fulfill what he has promised you. It’s just a matter of time. So as you approach the time of promise and you are in the fire know that God is with you. He will not leave you alone. Let me share one last scripture before I sign off.
“And the Lord gave them rest on every side, just as he had solemnly promised their ancestors. None of their enemies could stand against them, for the Lord helped them conquer all their enemies. Not a single one of all the good promises the Lord had given to the family of Israel was left unfulfilled; everything he had spoken came true.”
Joshua 21:44, 45 NLT
Bless you friends
Rolain
kingspeech 