Dear friends, don’t let this one thing escape you: With the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. The Lord does not delay His promise, as some understand delay, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance. (2 Peter 3:8-9 HCSB)
It’s time for us to get some perspective on what it takes to see our promises fulfilled. For God, a day, a year, a thousand years, is just a drop in the bucket. He can work outside the limitations that we are bound to when it comes to time. Just think, how could Jesus die for all sins, past present and future, if thousands of years worth of sins hadn’t even yet happened? How could promises and prophecies be written in ancient Israel, and yet we see them accomplished over and over throughout history? God doesn’t see time as one long unbroken line of events, and He wants us to learn to see into our future, and to see our past healed, long after it occurred.
When God tells us that faith is believing before we see, being sure of something before it even happens, He is asking us to enter into His supernatural realm. Faith is seeing and visualizing what will happen in the future, and to be so certain of it that we base our decisions on that certainty. To the world, that is craziness. The Bible says that this kind of craziness is the only way we can please God (“…for without faith, it is impossible to please God.” Hebrews 11:6)
The devil is an expert at convincing us that God takes too long and that He probably didn’t even hear our prayer or care about answering us. He keeps us focused on the monotonous line of time and circumstances marching on into the future, and the impossibility that an answer from God could occur outside of that line. But we have come to discover that when a crazy, audacious faith is active, time, space, and even the laws of science, can be suspended. God accomplishes what He wants, when His people are bold enough to believe beyond what their eyes can see. When it takes time, it’s because God is doing a better job of answering you than you realize. His greater vision is that all come to Him and repent. If a quickie miracle causes people to become selfish and turn their backs on God the moment they get what they want, that would accomplish nothing. Sometimes God is working on a deeper level to bring about our own repentance, or for those around us.
“God does not delay,” is His promise. So what do you do when it feels like your answer is dragging on too long? Stand firm and claim this verse: God does not delay. The answer is yours to such a degree, that you have to act on it. Be joyful when the sickness still appears to linger. God does not delay. Boldly move forward in your life, when it seems like you’ll never break free from the past. Do you have faith for something big? Is it the will of God? Will you honor God with your testimony? Then visualize that answer as yours, and act, think and react, as if it has already been granted to you – because it has!
For those who feel to afraid to live in this kind of radical faith, come to church more often this week and learn how to. Hear testimonies and have your questions answered. You can’t afford to live so far from God a day longer.
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