The One who began this glorious work  in you will faithfully continue the process of maturing you and will put his finishing touches to it until the unveiling of our Lord Jesus Christ!  Philippians 1:6

A common question when considering the promises of God is, “Why haven’t my promises come to pass yet?” What does it mean when the gap only seems to widen between promise we’ve received and promise fulfilled? And what do we do with the time in between?

Often, when we find ourselves waiting for God to fulfill some promise He’s given, it means that God is creating a new level of partnership and fellowship with us – and you and I are invited to join Him. He’s making us able to receive the fulfillment of the promise – capable of handling the responsibility that goes along with any of the gifts that He gives us.

And sometimes when we find ourselves waiting a long time for God to fulfill His promises, we become distracted from those promises. We remember them, but we’ve stopped actively agreeing and aligning our hearts with God’s intention. When we do that, we step out of the place of agreement that He has for us and lose some of the and fullness that is needed to walk out His promises.

So how do we rediscover and realign with God’s gifts of promise?
1) Hear the unchanging commitment of God in His promises. Dwell on His loving commitment to keep fulfilling in us all that He promises, just as today’s verse promises us.

Recognize that every time God makes a promise to us, He’s making a specific claim in our life – and He’s giving us permission to make a claim on the resources that come with His promise.

It’s His way of proclaiming, “This is my dream for you and these are the promises that go with that dream.” But often, the resources come before the promise is realized. So our part is to listen carefully to God’s commitment and look for Him to provide the resources.

2) Agree with Him-out loud. In Philemon (Paul prays that) “the communication of your faith may become effective by the acknowledging of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus” (1:6). Our faith becomes effective within us through actively acknowledging every good thing God is building in us in Jesus.

So often our agreement with God remains theoretical and abstract. Sort of like believing that God is all powerful, but never availing ourselves to His power or to the testimonies of others and their experience of His power. His power is hypothetical to us, but for all practical purposes, useless to us, too, because we live like it all happens in our own strength.

That’s part of the reason that there’s power in connecting our agreement to our words:
”       “I agree with Your dreams for me.”
”       “I receive the promises You are making to me.”
”       “I accept the resources that You will provide to prepare me to receive those promises.”
”       “I wait patiently for You to make good on your promises.”

Doing this takes God’s promises out of the abstract and makes it real to us.. It takes what is true but theoretical and helps us to own it…to own God’s promises to us.

More on this next time.