Promise. Covenant. What is their purpose? While they are just an extension of God’s blessings, should they be revered in place of the Source or the Giver Himself? It is very tempting and common among born-again Christians to disorder their priorities in life after receiving promises from God—which could be the perfect spouse, ministry leadership, growing ministry, career success, big apartment, prosperity, etc.
As a usual scenario, freshly born-again Christians are observed to be very faithful to God giving Him the first priority over their most cherished things. However, as time passes by, they start slipping back from their first priority to God as they divert their focus from Him onto other less important things.
God is jealous of for you
As for God and His relationship with you, all that matters for Him is YOU because He loves you. This is evident through the eternal sacrifice of His precious Lamb Jesus Christ. If He senses a threat to His relationship with you, He withdraws or delays the promises/blessings which He gave you until you understand in your spirit that He is the only One you should give the first place in your life.
And mind you, He is a jealous God. How many times have we heard that! Yet, we turn a deaf ear to it, getting engrossed in our own pleasures. Making Him strive to get His own bride’s (your) attention is probably the most taxing job you could give Him (don’t take it literally, you know what I mean).
When you put Him in such a position, it is you who distance yourself from the promises you’ve received. Until and unless you get it in your soul that He should be the most important Person in your life, you would keep delaying the fulfillment of your received promises.
Sometimes, God allows some things to take place in our lives to teach us to align our perspective with His Word. For Him, your eternal life is of more importance than your temporal earthly blessings. After all, how profiting is it to lose your own soul in exchange of a few blessings, or the whole world for that matter? (Mark 8:36)
How much do you know about the Father of All Nations?
Father Abraham’s faith story is quite a spiritually moving one. We are fully aware of how he demonstrated his faith by putting his long awaited, only son Isaac, through whom the fulfillment of his received promise was due, on the sacrifice altar. But, is that all you should be aware of from the ‘great father at 100’ story?
Mind you, the promise of becoming the father of all nations was to come to pass through Isaac. And God had asked Abraham to sacrifice the only star in the huge sky, where God had promised him to multiply his descendants like the uncountable stars in the sky, and unmeasurable sand of a seashore (Genesis 22:17). How fair was it on the part of God? Well, read on.
At some point of time in his life, Abraham’s priority seemed to be diverted and he unknowingly shifted his first love from God to his beloved son Isaac. And to see His relationship with Abraham restored again and confirm his first love towards Him, He asked him to sacrifice Isaac. You see, this is what happens when we rob God’s time and invest our whole soul into the promised blessings He gives us.
You don’t feel the same agape love for God which you used to earlier with your fresh start with Christ. You tend to compromise your priorities with God. As explained earlier, God so loves us that He does not want to lose us for eternity by allowing us to make our blessings as idols and worship them.
As a result, He asks us to sacrifice the blessings or other things which are sidelining God from our lives. It won’t be incorrect to say that He keeps us away from the Promised Land for the moment until His teaching session is over.
What should you do?
The first thing you should be aiming at is patience when it seems like your promise is taking forever to fulfill. Young men and women often try to outdo some things, putting them into a more spiritually complex situation. You need to keep this in your mind that it’s not you nor anybody or anything that is responsible or capable of fulfilling the promise.
It’s the promise-Giver Himself and the only One, in fact! You can do nothing to fulfill the promise because it’s a promise, a Word from God. It’s His grace and not your qualification, ability, or works. So, the second thing to follow is to just believe His promises never fail.
Thirdly, know that you’re in safe hands. God is constructing you and doing a good work in you to prepare you for the glorious promise you received. Allow the Holy Spirit to work in you, teach you, and discipline you. Be sensitive to His calling and reconstruction in you. Align yourself to what He wants to teach you from the “delaying promise” situation.
Remember, God’s in total control of your situation and everything that happens in your life has passed through the authorization of God. So, renew your mind with the Word and confess your promise—that’s very powerful!
Your received promise will never go unfinished nor did He bluff you while giving the promise, so be encouraged. He will surely pluck the good fruit for you once it completely ripens so that you enjoy it to the fullest. Stay a believer!