Don’t come short, when it comes to God’s Promises
Hebrews 4:1 “Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into His rest, any of you should seem to come short of it.”
Have you ever tried to reach up or out to something and it is just out of reach?
This is the way many of us think about the promises of God. They are great and we want them;…..but they seem just out of reach.
But God never intends His Word to be seen, and not used. He intends us to have what He promises us.
Faith reaches out and gets what God has for us.
Every promise in the Word, and every promise given to you personally, is nothing until entered into by faith.
And there can never be completed faith, without obedience.
Promises are only promises, until we have them.
First, we apprehend them by faith.
That is, you see that God has this for you, personally, and you reach out…..believing…..to His Word.
When you do, you should have the hope (remember hope is the confident expectation that God will do what He says) of these promises by the assurance of the Holy Spirit within.
Second, you apprehend these promises, by obedience. You live them.
I have had the Lord tell me to walk like I had what He said….to, in fact, use the Word, and the grace given. Stop waiting for a “sign”…..just use it.
Sometimes there are conditions to the promises the Lord gives, like the seed on the ground:
one, a hard walking path—no receiving there.
Others on rocks and thorns, which received by faith, but never put it to use.
The last, the good ground, which was tilled and received it by faith, (it says it “keeps” it)… put it to use. Some thirty-fold, some sixty-fold, some an hundred-fold.
(Mark 14:14-20)
Without the element of faith, there is nothing.
For faith makes the things of God, real to us, so that we can apprehend them.
(Apprehend here means that we have them in hand. They are ours.
Like a felon is apprehended…only when they have him….not when they are just looking for him.)
Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
It is a true substance. It exists within you by the Holy Spirit.
It gives us the proof within us, to use the word God gives us. In other words, you know it.
Faith is what is within us that reaches out to God in times of trouble, in praise, for help, for comfort, and for fellowship.
Hebrews 4:2 “For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.”
Let us not lose what He promises, by not believing Him….or thinking that they are out of reach…
But let us gain all that He has for us to have, through the Holy Spirit, apprehending His promises, which He wants to give.
Let us “keep” His promises to us, and gain one hundred-fold for Christ Jesus,……..in believing obedience to His Word.
Preaching, Teaching, and Notes 