Galatians 6:7-10: Don’t be misled—you cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant. Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature. But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit. So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up. Therefore, whenever we have the opportunity, we should do good to everyone—especially to those in the family of faith.

I’ve found that walking by faith and believing God for a promise to be fulfilled in my life isn’t hard until Satan sticks his nose in my business, then faith becomes a struggle. The Apostle James tells us to count it all joy when we fall into various trials. Let me preface this passage with these thoughts: Have you ever had the Lord make a promise to you, and you got excited with anticipation of the fulfillment of that blessing or increase in your life? Only to discover that shortly after you experienced the goodness of the Lord, it seemed as though the bottom just seemed to fall out of your life. Things that worked well for you may have even stopped working altogether. You no longer had normal problems; instead, they quickly escalated into weird and unexplainable coincidences or happenings.

It’s one thing for a believer to have a bad day, but when we have a bad day when we were expecting a blessing from heaven, it tends to cause us to become disillusioned and disappointed. Now, I will remind you what James tells us to do when faced with various trials. We are to count it all joy and wait on God’s promise to be fulfilled because we know that God can’t lie. Therefore, we wait on God while exercising great patience. We’re taught that we should have joy when we meet with disappointment and discouragement instead of breakthrough. We should feel joy, not because we’re not human (now that we’re a Christian), but because we know that God is faithful, and this is a test to see if we will remain faithful even though it appears God has abandoned us.

The promises of God aren’t given to people who walk in unbelief. Instead, they are granted to those who are found to have faith in God when it appears as though God has forgotten what He has promised. If this process sounds strange or new to you as a believer, then allow me to give you a couple of examples before you begin your day that will encourage you to hang on and not give up on God.

In Genesis 1:28, God promised Adam and Eve that they would have dominion over the earth, over the animals, and that they would also replenish the earth. After this time of prophecy and blessing, God put them in the Garden of Eden to test their hearts. Would they hold on to the promises of God and obey His voice in the interim or would they grow weary while waiting on God and disobey? We see that God tested their hearts by placing them where they had to decide, which, in turn, would determine if He could bless them. Unfortunately, they made the wrong choice and lost the blessing of God.

In Exodus, God made a promise to Israel that He would give them a land flowing with milk and honey. Shortly after Israel was delivered from the land of bondage, they found themselves in the wilderness having to depend on God for food and water. The wilderness was nothing like the promise they had heard about while they were in Egypt. When the people realized that God had brought them to the wilderness and not the Promise Land, they begin to rebel because they didn’t count it joy. They allowed discouragement and disappointment to cause them to harden their hearts to the voice of God in unbelief. Since they chose to walk in unbelief, God couldn’t bless them with the Promised Land.

God speaks through Moses in Deuteronomy 8 and tells the children of Israel why He had brought them through the wilderness. It was the same reason that He placed Adam and Eve in the garden and why He tests our hearts after we receive a promise. He allowed them to hunger to see if they would keep His commandments and to see what was in their hearts. When we expect God to fulfill His Word, but He tarries the fulfillment of it, and we go into a decline instead, we must be careful to guard our hearts so that we don’t allow unbelief to fill them.

Read James 1:12 and you’ll discover that James is no longer talking about trials. He says, “Blessed is the man or woman who endures temptations.” Why did he change his focus from trials to temptations? While Adam and Eve waited on the unfolding of God’s promises, Satan came and tempted Eve. While Israel waited on God to fulfill His promise, Satan tempted them with unbelief, and they entered into that temptation. While Jesus waited on the provision of the Father after forty days of fasting, Satan tempted Him; however, Jesus was submitted to God completely.

Yes, you and I will have to face some serious and burdensome trials while we wait on the faithfulness of God. In the meantime, we must be careful to guard our hearts against weariness, and we must encourage ourselves until the promise comes. Have you gone through so much hardship and discouragement that you have either given up or are about to give up on God’s faithfulness? Allow these truths to begin to get down into your heart and spirit and stir up your faith to keep on obeying and believing. Who knows? This might be the breakthrough word that takes you over, and into the very promise that you were about to believe couldn’t be inherited. In your patience, possess you, your soul.  —submitted by Pastor Asa Dockery, US