The Fulfillment Of A Promise

God gives us many wonderful promises in His Word, but we often don’t live by them. This leads us to think that God won’t answer our prayers, and we doubt His desire to work in our lives. We end up asking for things that are not in His will and have no foundation in Scripture. If we want answers to our prayers, we need to ask God for things that are rooted in His Word.

Today…….I am asking all my prayer warriors to say a prayer that may help others. So many people are hurting right now. Many are struggling with finances and need jobs. Some are facing foreclosure and don’t even know how they are going to make it from week to week.. Many are lonely. .

Many are heartbroken. . Many are facing sickness and health is fading. . Some are dealing with difficult family members. Many have lost HOPE.. Tonight, let us put our prayers and faith together decree and declare breakthrough over our families. Financial miracles WILL take place. Jobs WILL be found. Our Bodies WILL be made whole & sickness WILL flee. Marriages and relationships WILL be restored. Family members WILL find Jesus. Heartbreaks WILL be healed. JOY WILL be restored and HOPE WILL be found. In Jesus Name. Amen!!!!!! Keep God First…….

Start your day off, right? With the free in touch.
Devotional, subscribe today in touch with Dr Charles Stanley celebrating 45 years of God’s faithfulness in sharing the gospel worldwide.
Next on in touch, the fulfillment of a promise.
It’s one thing to know a promise of the scripture is something else to experience it.
So when we talk about the promises of God, the bible is full of them.
And we talked about many people say they are 40,000, 32,000 8,000 as we said before.
The important thing is not how many, but the fact that God has kept every promise He’s made and he’s never forgotten the single one.
His promises come in two forms.
They’re either conditional, which means He makes a promise condition upon something that must happen or must not happen.
And he makes an unconditional promise, which means He promises something is going to happen.
And regardless of the circumstances, it will happen and cannot change.
He’s an awesome loving God who desires to give us promises by which we live.
And if you’ll think about it for a moment, many people wonder why God doesn’t answer their prayer one of the primary reasons is the fact they ask for things that are not the will of God.
And secondly, they doubt and one of the primary reasons people doubt God answering their petition is because they don’t have any foundation for it.
That is they ask and it’s a matter of feeling and hoping and wishing, but no foundation.
If you’re asking God to give you guidance in some area, or if it’s something that you need in your life, you need listen to put a foundation to that so that you can get anchored in that you need to have a promise from God’s Word.
And there are many promises in God’s word and there’s a promise for every single solitary thing that you and I need is here.
So what I wanna do in this message is this, I want to use one story, one event in the Old Testament uh as a track to show you.
How does God answer prayer? How, how does, how does he deal with His promises?
We said sometimes he has unconditional promises, they’re gonna be that way. Nothing’s going to change it.
So I want to take you along that track. Now, it’s not that you simply have never heard the events.
What I want you to see is that I want you to see principle after principle in this scenario with Abraham.
So now let’s start with the very beginning and I want you to turn to the 12th chapter of Genesis.
Uh We read this passage um before, but I want us to read this very clear promise that God gave to Abraham in these first few verses beginning in chapter 12 and verse one.
Now, the Lord said to Abraham, go forth from your country, from your relatives, from your father’s house to a land which I will show you and I will make you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great.
And so you shall be a blessing and I will bless those who bless you.
And the one who curses you, I will curse and you.
He says, and you, all the families of the earth will be blessed.
Here is a eightfold unconditional promise by God to Abraham.
Now, what I want you to see is I want you to watch what happens in this man’s life because a long period of time takes place before God fulfills all these promises.
And one of the reasons we miss some of God’s best blessings in our life is because his time schedule doesn’t meet ours.
And of course we see here’s a perfect example in this passive scripture that shows us between chapter 12 and 22.
What happens when people are not willing to wait for God’s promises when they take things in their own hands and what happens as a result.
So let’s look at this and the first thing I want you to jot down in your notes is simply this and that is that the promises of God are stated clearly.
That is God would never say to you. Now, here’s what I’m thinking about.
Oh, he wouldn’t say I want you to consider, oh, he wouldn’t say, well, uh uh here, here’s what I’m, here’s what I’d like you to do.
You figure it out. God’s promises are crystal clear.
There’s not a single hazy shady kind of uncertain promise in the word of God.
So therefore he’s gonna make it very, very clear.
And there are many promises in the scripture and many of these promises apply to you and me just like they did to Abraham.
You see. Well, I haven’t been a Christian very long. That hasn’t got anything to do with it.
God doesn’t change his principles. Watch this carefully.
He loves every single one of us unconditionally that is He wants the best for every single one of us.
His promises include every single aspect of our life because He has a purpose for your life.
And sometimes people have the idea. Well, well, who am I? And God doesn’t have any purpose in my life.
Yes, he does. You, you’re not listening to him. He has a purpose and a plan for your life.
He wants to accomplish something through you. So the first thing He does is he makes his promise very clear.
But the second thing I want you to notice is this and that is with God’s, listen, with his promises, comes clear guidance.
For example, if you’re seeking his mind and heart about something.
And God says, here’s what I want you to do.
God is never gonna leave you to sort of figure it out for yourself.
And uh in this sixth verse, uh the Bible says that Abraham passed through the land as far as the site of Shek to the oak of now, the canon was in the land.
Now, why is he saying this? Because he wanted him to follow a certain path.
Now watch this carefully because this is what gets people in trouble.
They don’t follow God’s direction, they start out following God’s direction, then they think I’ll take it from here.
And so he said the canaanite was in the land.
Well, remember the Canon nights parasites, Havis Bu sites, all the I they were all enemies of the people of God.
And so he said to him, he said, uh I, I’m, I’m gonna be with you.
So the important thing is that we recognize that God is going to guide us in whatever He tells us to do.
You think about all the decisions you have to make in life and think about decisions that pop up that you and I don’t even plan on things that we don’t even have any details about.
But he says, I will guide you.
That’s a promise that belongs to every single child of God that you can’t bring up any issue that he didn’t know all about it.
You can’t bring up any question that he didn’t have an answer for.
And he’s not gonna say, well, maybe he’s not gonna say, well, I’ll think about it.
I forgot that God wants to be personally involved in every single area of your life because He knows you.
I live in a world that’s wicked, vile, corrupt, you name it.
And Satan is our enemy and therefore God wants to be involved in every aspect of our life.
Then there’s a third thing that’s important here and that’s this and that is, there should be many times in life when there’s a time of personal worship and meditation in our life, seeking His guidance and direction and the more critical the decision.
But the more time you and I should be spending and doing what just what we’re talking about here, meditating upon his word.
What did he say? How does he operate? And that more than likely you.
And I will never come to a place in life where we think.
Well, I I’ve got that down and somebody is all that cocky about their understanding of everything.
You better watch out because listen, times change, things change.
God doesn’t change but God, listen, God may change our sense of direction.
He may change what we’re doing and God may come to you tomorrow and say, you know what?
I don’t want you working here anymore.
He said I couldn’t be of God because it’s so hard to get a job.
If God said I want you to quit your job today, I have something else for you.
You’d say, well, you know what? That’s not even reasonable. I’m not about that. That couldn’t be.
God don’t underestimate God’s surprise interventions in your life because here’s one of the things God wants to do in every change of our life.
What does he want to do? He does it in a way that only he can get credit for it.
Number one. And secondly, he wants us to learn to trust him.
And in order to do that, you’ve got to stay in a right relationship with him.
And so what we find in these passages here, beginning, for example, in the seventh verse, now Abraham was already on the move.
The Lord appeared to Abraham and said to your descendants, I will give this land.
So he built an altar there to the Lord who appeared to him.
Then the scripture says in verse eight, then he proceeded from there to the mountain on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and a on the east and there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord.
So what do you, what do you find him doing?
He moves in the direction God wants him to go and then he takes the time and when they built an altar, it could have been a kind of altar but used it, for example, a stone altar and that pile of stones represented.
You just think about all the technology we have. That technology was real simple.
Power of stones here, poles, stones there and poles over here because he went back to the same pile of stones and scripture will tell us in a moment, he went back to the same poles stones because he want to be reminded of what God said to Him.
This is why I encourage you to keep a diary.
This is why I encourage you to write down what God says to you because you listen, Satan will steal it.
He will take it right out of your mind.
And I do believe that God oftentimes speaks to us the same requirement over and over and over again because He knows, think about how busy you are on any given day.
He knows that our minds can be contaminated with all kind of stuff.
He wants us walking in the center of his wheel. Why? Because He wants the best for your life.
And if there’s anything I could say to someone, God wants the best for your life, but you’ve got to cooperate with Him.
He’s gonna do his part. He’s gonna show you the way he’s gonna make a way he’s gonna provide the way he’s gonna do everything that a sovereign loving God can do.
To help you on your way in life.
But if you violate that and you decide you’re gonna do it yourself, you’re gonna get in trouble.
It’s very, very simple and very, it’s very clear in the word of God, which leads me to this next point.
That’s this, that changing course from God’s pathway, changing course from God’s guidance. What, what does that do?
Well, first of all indicates that we are doubting God’s promise.
Now, Lord, I know that I know this is what you said.
But Lord I must uh this can’t be true because this is totally unreasonable. So let’s see.
Why did he think that? Well, if you look at this passage of scripture and look in this 10th verse, there was a famine in the land.
So Abraham went down to Egypt, the sojourn there for the famine was severe in the land.
But here’s what you’ll find out.
First time Egypt is mentioned in the scriptures every time he headed to Egypt, he got in trouble.
Think about what God told him all the specific things he tell him and then there’s a famine and he said, I better head out somewhere else, got him in trouble.
Well, that’s not the only trouble he had, but uh that’s part of it because he stepped out of God’s plan out of God’s will.
And this is why somebody says, well, I don’t know that I know the will of God that much.
That’s why meditation, reading the word of God, praying, reading your bible, focusing your life on God makes the difference is just that simple that none of us are smart enough to do it on our own.
And they let the word of God, which this is, this is how we get direction in our life when you and I are looking for God’s direction and he knows we need, when we need clarity and he needs, he knows when we need assurance.
He knows who we are afraid and He knows exactly what’s going on.
Yeah, you’ve got to stay in the word of God.
You think you can live without it, but you will get in trouble every single time, meditation upon the witness.
And you know what this is, this is a divine, a divine compass that’s perfectly accurate and nothing can get it off of accuracy.
And God has given it to us that God is and the leaders in our Christian life.
And so when we try to fix things and do it that way, it just doesn’t work that way at all.
Now, then look at what happens and that is God will renew his promise because He wants us to follow Him.
He will renew his promise to us as we follow His will in the 15th chapter.
If you move on over there, and we’ve given him some chapters because of things that are going on that are not necessarily did not apply to this.
So in the 15th chapter verse one, after these things, the word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision saying, do not fear Abraham.
I’m a shield to you. Your reward shall be very great.
Abraham said, oh, Lord God, what will you give me since I’m childless?
And the heir of my house is a liaison of Damascus is one of his servants.
Abraham said, since you have given no offspring to me, one boy in my house is my heir.
Then behold the word of the Lord came to him saying this man will not be your heir but one who will come forth from your own body.
He shall be your heir. And he took him outside and said, now look toward the heavens, count the stars if you’re able to count them.
And he said to him, listen. Uh so shall your descendants be?
Then he believed in the Lord and he would recognize it unto him, his righteousness.
And he said to him, I am the Lord who brought you out of the earth of the cal.
They give you this land to possess it. Then of course, he said, oh Lord, God, what about so?
And so what I want you to say is this in God’s awesome love for us wherever he leads us.
And especially when the, when the way gets difficult and hard and we can’t quite see our way.
It’s in his wonderful grace that God will take the time and do whatever is necessary to reassure us that we are walking in his path though.
It may be difficult, may be hard. We’re walking in his path may be questionable. Others may think.
Well, why, why are you doing that? He would, he reassured him? Here’s exactly what I want you to remember.
Here’s what I’m doing. We’re gonna do it just exactly like I said it.
And so, uh, the Lord kept blessing him now, which leads me to another issue here.
And that is that sometimes listening, the ungodly counsel or what may not necessarily be ungodly but unwise counsel can cause us to know the promises of God and get out of the will of God.
And so the best example of that is in the 16th chapter, uh you know, this story, what happens?
Well, Sarah can’t have a child and so, uh, some time goes by and so she says Abraham, uh here’s what I’d like to do.
She’s called Abraham those days. Here’s what I like to do.
Uh, you get the maid and, uh, I’m gonna turn the maid over to you and, uh, we’ll, I’ll have a child that way.
Well, this is a perfect example. You step out of God’s will do it your way instead of his way.
You always have trouble. Did you hear that say? Amen, always have trouble.
So now this good relationship that they seem had between Abraham’s wife and Hagar and himself.
Now there’s immediate conflict in the family because the scripture says he went into Hagar and she conceived.
And when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her sight.
Now, here’s a man living with two women in the same household.
They were all getting along fine until he listened to Sarah’s ill advice and did what she said instead of trusting God, he wasn’t trusting.
God. God says, God says, here’s what I’m gonna do it through you, not through an Egyptian, but through you and God made it crystal clear.
And so listening to unwise counsel, we get you out of the will of God.
And usually when that happens, other people suffer as a result.
Then of course, sometimes the fulfillment of God’s promise may seem impossible when we view it from our eyes.
And this is what in the 17th chapter, this is where we find the Lord speaking to uh Abraham and uh telling him what he’s going to do, I will bless her and indeed I will give you a son by her, then I will bless her and she shall be a mother of nations.
Kings of peoples will come from her. Now listen to this because it didn’t seem reasonable.
Then Abraham fell on his face laughing and said, in his heart, will a child be born to a man who is 100 years old and will Sarah who is 90 years old, bear a child And so you look at this passage and you, you think, well, God, what, what, what in the world were you up to in all this?
It, it seemed impossible. Why, why didn’t you just go ahead and let Sarah have a son?
What’s, what’s all this putting it off? A quarter of a century?
It didn’t make sense unless you know God.
And when you see it from God’s perspective, then we see it, We say, oh, I see.
So he laughed. When Sarah heard it, she laughed, they’re both laughing at God about God doing what he promised to do on his schedule in his timing and his way.
But he followed them.
He obeyed him as tough as it may have seemed to him at that particular time.
So then that leads me to the next one.
That’s simply this, that the fulfillment of God’s promise in life may require of us.
Something that appears to be in opposition to what He’s promised.
And he’s promised that through this child Isaac, he is going to bless all of mankind.
And then one day God says to him in the 22nd chapter came about after these things.
Then God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham. He said, here I am.
He said, take now your son, your own son whom you love.
Isaac offer him there on Mount Mariah as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will show you.
And that didn’t make any sense at all because it looked like God was contradicting himself.
He says through this child, I’m gonna bless the nations of the earth.
And now you’re telling me to go kill him. I just put it in a cold language.
Kill him. That doesn’t make sense. That in other words, that couldn’t be God.
God would not never say that. Watch this.
This is why we live by promise and we live by obedience, not by feelings and not by reason because some things just will not seem to be reasonable.
But what did he do? The scripture says very clearly, Abraham rose early the next morning and saddled his donkey, took two of his young men with him and Isaac his son, he split wood for the burn offering and rose and went to the place of which God had told him.
Here’s a significant thing.
On the 3rd day, Abraham raised his eyes and saw the place from a distance.
Abraham said to his young man, now watch this very significant verse in the bible.
Abraham said to his young men, stay here with a donkey and I and the land will go over there and we will worship and return to you.
What was Abraham saying? God’s made me a promise and he’s taken me this far.
He gave me a son, but I didn’t even think it was possible. He’s done all this.
If God tells me to sacrifice, my son, I’m going to be obedient to him because I believe that God will have to raise him from the dead.
But I’m gonna trust him to do.
It wasn’t reasonable, but he trusted him, which leads me to the last point.
That’s this. Sometimes the fulfillment of God’s promise may lead us to surrender something very dear to us.
So of all the things that Abraham owned and he was a very, very wealthy man.
The most important possession he had was Isaac his son. That’s why he called him.
The one the only one he loved.
Think about this Isaac was that link in the chain that kept the chain of the genealogy of Jesus in perfect sequence.
And so what did he do?
He took him up to the mountain, he had inbound, laid him up on the altar and raised the dagger to take his life.
It’s interesting, you recall the scripture says on their way up there that Isaac said, well, father, I see the wood and um I, I, I see how we can build an altar and I see the fire.
Where’s the lamb? And what Abraham said, gotta provide the lamb now watch this Isaac was the most precious thing he owned, that was his son, but he was willing to lay him down for the purpose of obeying God.
So let me ask you a question.
What is there in your life that you’re gripping?
You’re holding on to and somehow you just can’t surrender to God. Watch this carefully.
Is it a relationship that you have that you can’t open your hands to?
Is it something you possess that you can’t lay down something you own?
Is it some dream that you have some goal that you’ve set some path that you have chosen to walk?
But you know, when they lay it down, let me simply say this, you will end up disappointed in pain and heartache in suffering because that’s the way disobedience leads every single time.
But if you give it up and give it to Him, watch this carefully.
You will never lose, you cannot lose, giving yourself to Almighty God.
There is Son Jesus Christ, you cannot lose, you cannot win holding to yourself what God intends for you to lay down.
So where are you in your life?
Have you ever trusted Jesus Christ as your personal savior?
Or have you just decide you’re gonna live your life the way you want to live it?
And somehow you’re gonna make it work. You can’t make it work, watch this.
You cannot make work something that God were never allowed to work.
And that’s disobedience as a believer.
You and I may make decisions that are not right and God will forgive us and we’ll move on.
But if you deny Jesus Christ, if you reject the Son of God, listen, Isaac was to Abraham.
What what Jesus is to the father and the father gave Jesus to down the cross so that you could be forgiven of your sins so that you could have a gift of eternal life.
When you reject him, you reject God’s only avenue to a holy life and the life that’s eternal.
So if you hold on to what is yours to your way of life and reject him, what do you have?
You don’t have his guidance, you don’t have his presence, you don’t have anything.
It’s a deception of the devil that somehow you’re gonna make it in a way.
You cannot please listen to me. You cannot, you will not. God will not allow it.
The wisest thing you can do is to ask Father to forgive you of your sins and tell him that you’re trusting Jesus Christ, his sacrificed son of the cross who died to pay our sin debt in full.
You’re trusting Him as your personal savior. And from this point on, it’s his life, your life is his life.
Whatever he wants to do, wisest decision you will ever make in your life.
And father, I pray the Holy Spirit will sink these truths so deep so strongly, they cannot be forgotten, they cannot be ignored, they cannot be thwarted in any way.
We love you for loving us. None of us would boast that we deserve it.
But we know in our heart, we belong to you by creation and those of us who are your Children, we belong to you also by redemption.
And it’s our prayer that people everywhere would discover who you are.
And we, as your Children come to you this moment to say, Lord, whatever there is in our life that we are holding on to, that doesn’t fit your plan.
God. We lay it down today in Jesus name.
Amen.