Despite seeing so many amazing miracles in our midst (almost every day) for the past few weeks, I am somewhat surprised and perplexed to see how many FAM Fellowship members still struggle to WATCH for God’s hand at work in their circumstances and lives with a THANKFUL and EXPECTANT attitude. And that’s despite knowing all of the verses that make it abundantly clear how VITALLY important faith is as we stand for the restoration of our marriages. It just doesn’t get much simpler or clearer than what Jesus said in Mark 9:23 (NJKV), which says Jesus said to him, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.” And Matthew 9:29 (NASB) says Then He touched their eyes, saying, “It shall be done to you according to your faith.” And even though not one of us doubts the power of prayer and how important it as we stand for our marriages, we seem to forget the “instructions” given to us in Colossians 4:2, which says Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful.

There are SO many verses throughout the Bible making it so clear that when we ask for something in the name and in keeping with the will of God as revealed in His written Word, especially when praying in agreement with others, IF we have faith and BELIEVE God is going to do it, it WILL be done, and that there is NO force, wisdom, insight or plan that can keep it from being done (Proverbs 21:30)! And we see in Isaiah 46:11 that God will do WHATEVER it takes to accomplish HIS will, because it says From the east I summon a bird of prey; from a far-off land, a man to fulfill my purpose. What I have said, that will I bring about; what I have planned, that will I do. Of course, that’s just further confirmation of Jeremiah 55:10-11, which says As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. So if we have a difficult time accepting that, AND living our lives accordingly, we ARE calling God a liar, because Numbers 23:19 says God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?

Yet, there IS something WE can do to sabotage our own miracles; because Matthew 13:58 also makes it VERY clear that our LACK of faith CAN keep our miracles from coming to pass. It says And he did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith. So, it’s not really all that difficult for most of us to understand that we have to have faith as we stand for the restoration of our marriages, but we probably don’t know HOW to effectively demonstrate our faith, or realize some of the things we do that actually cancel it out and show god and the rest of the watching world that when it comes right down to it, we really DON’T trust and believe that God will deliver on His promises after all.. So let’s think of our prayers like going into a restaurant where we can see the cook preparing our food after it is ordered. Once we place the order, we KNOW they’re preparing it and that it WILL be delivered. So as we sit there, we watch the cook and finally see him putting what we ordered on the grill, and we think “That’s my dinner…yum, I’m hungry.” So we WATCH with anticipation and expectation; confident that we will have our meal soon. The cook finishes preparing “our” meal, and we see the waitress bringing it to us, and get even more excited, because we’re REALLY hungry! BUT instead of stopping at our table, the waitress just keeps going right on past us to another table! So now what do we do and think? Are we going to get up and leave the restaurant, because we thought that was our meal and it wasn’t delivered to us WEN we thought it was going to be? Or do we think “Oh, that was somebody else’s dinner. Mine will be next.”…and again start watching to see what the cook is doing? Obviously, that same scenario could play itself out several times before we ACTUALLY have our dinner sitting in front of us for our enjoyment and pleasure. But we didn’t get up and leave, because we KNEW we had placed the order and it WOULD come in time! Well, it’s really the same way with God, but we don’t believe that. The Bible is our menu of promises; the Holy spirit is our waitress, and God is our cook! We have to read the menu to know what’s available; then we give our waitress our order through prayer; and God prepares our meal based on HIS schedule and not ours…BUT WE WILL GET OUR DINNER. Yet, unlike at the restaurant, where we never really doubted that, even if we were irritated and impatient due to what we considered unreasonable or unnecessary delays, when we experience delays on God’s promises, we often just get up and leave! And just like in the restaurant scenario, if we just get up and leave, there’s a good chance that our dinner would show up right after we leave the restaurant! Of course, there is another option; we could cancel the order…and that’s what way too many of us do when we stop watching and giving thanks! The ONLY reason to stop expecting to receive our promise is if we have cancelled the order…which is EXACTLY what we do with our negative thoughts, speech and actions! Even if we don’t verbalize the cancellation, God knows our hearts, so He KNOWS we have cancelled it, because we’re NOT expecting it, and we’re NOT watching out for its soon arrival with great anticipation and thanksgiving!

So as we stand for the restoration of our marriages and families, we need to pay a lot more attention to what kind of message we’re sending to the Lord. Does He know we are waiting with great anticipation for what we want, which just makes Him all the more eager to make sure that it is better than we expect it to be, or does He see that we’re not expecting anything, and that there’s no need to deliver?

The most common way I’ve seen the inability to be watchful and thankful played out in the lives of our members this past week or so is in how things going on around them tend to be perceived. Unfortunately, it seems way too easy to see and accept the negative possible explanations for the things we hear and see instead of recognizing and believing the positive possibilities. And when we expect the Lord to be delivering on His promises, we should be LOOKING for the positive evidence that He is doing just that, and not focusing on all of the signs indicating that He ISN’T! So that means we need to develop the habit of evaluating EVERYTHING in terms of our faith and confidence that God WILL deliver on His Word and promise. That means very deliberately and intentionally ignoring and disregarding anything negative or contrary to the fulfillment of our prayers, and CHOOSING to focus on and respond to whatever we can find that is positive. And some times we do have to dig to find the positive, but it is there almost ALL of the time, if we’d just look for it! And even if in some very rare circumstance, we can’t find the positive, that’s a WHOLE lot better than ALWAYS looking for and finding, or even worse yet, responding to the negatives. When we look for the positives in faith that God is doing ex
actly what His Word says He will do, then we are trusting Him with all of our hearts. And when we only see the negative possibilities, we’re leaning to our own understanding and we are NOT acknowledging the power and promise of God in all of our ways. And since we need God to make our paths straight, just as Proverbs 3:5-6 tells us He will do, we have a clear choice to make. So it is my hope and prayer that everyone standing for marriage restoration will make the choice to be devoted in prayer, while watching and giving thanks for the inevitable delivery of God’s promise, which is that HE will uphold the covenant of our marriages! And when we believe and understand that, we can’t help being blessed and encouraged!

Posted Friday, May 11th, 2007 at 2:25 pm in Seeds Of Faith.