How long should you keep praying and believing God for the answer? This Scripture addresses your question: ‘Therefore do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise’ (vv. 35-36 NKJV). Many of God’s promises have timelines, and you need long-distance faith to receive them. Note the word ‘endurance’, and picture yourself as a marathon runner determined to finish the race and receive the prize. Note the words ‘after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise’. You say, ‘I’m not sure what God’s will in this matter is.’ What does God’s Word say? That’s what you must obey, stand on, and speak over your situation. For twenty years Abraham looked up into the night sky believing: ‘Lord, you said my children would be as numerous as the stars. I don’t know how you’re going to do it because I’m a hundred years old and my wife Sarah is ninety. But I’m going to believe you anyway’ (see Genesis 15:5-6). When you pray that way, you risk looking foolish in the eyes of others. But receiving the miraculous can involve looking ridiculous, like Jesus telling servants to fill pots with water when what they needed was wine. Or rubbing clay on a blind man’s eyes so that he would receive his sight. But the wedding guests drank the finest wine, and the blind man went home seeing. Why? Because they stood on the word Jesus gave them. And you must do that too.

© 2024. Written by Bob and Debby Gass. Used by permission under licence from UCB International.