Answered Prayers continued...
In knowing the promises of God we can appropriate them, but we can only appropriate them if we believe them. We must solidify the promises of God in our hearts, and believe Him at His word. We know He is able. We know nothing is impossible for Him, and if He promised He would carry us through the storm, if He promised He would carry us through the fire, then He will do it, regardless of how improbable, or even impossible it might seem.
My God is able! This has been my go-to motto for the past twenty-five years, and He has not failed me yet.
I was doing a radio interview recently, and in talking about a God of power, and a God of miracles, the interviewer asked me to give at least one example of the miracle working power of God.
I could have gone back in time, to stories of my youth, wherein I had seen the power of God manifest in very unique and wonderful ways, but what God compelled me to do, is give the interviewer an example of a miracle that has been ongoing for the last fifteen years.
Fifteen years! Not fifteen days, or weeks or months, but fifteen years.
Our ministry opened the Hand of Help orphanage in 1997, and this year is our fifteen year anniversary. In all this time, the children in our care have never once gone to bed hungry, naked or cold. We don’t fundraise. We don’t give out hats and cups and t-shirts if people support the orphanage. I don’t promise anyone I’ll put their name on a plaque if they give a certain amount, and yet God still speaks to hearts, God still provides, and all the bills get paid, and all the kids get fed, and all the staff is compensated for their time.
So yes, I believe in a God of miracles. I know His promises, I believe His promises, and because I believe His promises I can appropriate His promises.
There is comfort and peace and joy in knowing the promises of God - because no matter what the trial, no matter what the circumstance might be - there is a promise in the Bible that will be as a balm for you.
Psalm 50:15, “Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify Me.”
This is a promise of God, for whenever you find yourself in trouble. God promises He will deliver if we call upon Him, and once He has delivered us in our day of trouble, we will glorify Him.
Instead of going to the word of God, instead of seeing what God has to say concerning our day of trouble, we have the tendency to panic, to hyperventilate, to seek refuge of our own making, and cry out more in frustration and anger than in a spirit of prayerfulness.
The promise is there for every child of God! Call upon Him in the day of trouble and He will deliver you. God did not quantify His promise. He did not stipulate that He would deliver you if He had time, if He wasn’t busy doing something else, if He was awake, or if He wasn’t on vacation.
He simply said: ‘Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you!’
Psalm 91:15-16, “He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him, and show him My salvation.”
Yet another promise of God left gathering dust, because believers are too busy doing other things.
Once again God promises that if we call upon Him, He will answer. If we call upon Him, He will be with us in trouble; He will deliver us, and honor us.
Keep in mind these are not the promises of man. These promises are not contingent on whether someone feels like keeping their word, or if they have time in their busy schedule, or if they remember having promised you something in the first place.
These promises were made by God, whose memory is not short, who is not constrained by circumstance, and who keeps His word and His promises from generation to generation and age to age.
The only reason we’re not seeing the promises of God being fulfilled and made manifest in our lives is because we have not done what was required of us to do. God tells us to call upon Him that He might deliver us in the day of trouble. As such, logic would dictate that if we were not delivered in our day of trouble, we didn’t do our part and call upon Him.
‘But brother Mike, you don’t know the trouble I’m in.’
No, I may not know the trouble you’re in, but God does, and once again, he does not quantify His promise based on the degree of your trouble’s difficulty. God never said that if you couldn’t be delivered from your trouble in ten minutes or less His promise was void. There are no stipulations to the promises of God save for those we find in His word.
Any man who attempts to add to what God has promised, and creates his own stipulations and qualifications, is a liar! No, God won’t keep His promise to you only if you support a certain individual’s ministry. No, God won’t keep His promise to you only if you make a vow of faith to one of the sleek and surgically enhanced televangelists staring back at you from your television set.
If you call upon Him, God will answer you! He will deliver you, honor you, satisfy you with long life, and show you His salvation.
With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.
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3 comments:
Mike, please let us know your thoughts, and if God has spoken to you about it, that also - on the following issue. All these promises in the Bible about "call on me, I will deliver you ..." and other similar ones - we are encouraged to believe this, depend on it, understanding that we need to have our lives right with God in order for it to apply to us, etc. Here's what throws me. Your grandfather - how could anyone be more faithful, more right with God, under the worst of conditions - yet surely he called upon God for help when he was being electrocuted, beaten, having reeds shoved under his fingernails. God did not deliver him from that, not in any way that seems like deliverance or help. He lived through it, but most people would rather die outright than be put through extended tortures. An official that was responsible for ordering the torture was struck dead and is probably in hell, but this did not spare him from all the torment up to that point. The Hebrew children were delivered from the fiery furnace, but poor Dumitru was tortured. He lived out the faith that they verbalized, but were not required to live out - that of actually suffering the torment without giving in. I recently read of the Ukrainian famine in 1932-1933, deliberately created by the Stalin regime, in which 7 - 10 million people were forcibly starved to death in one of the most fertile farmlands in the world. Crops rotted in the fields while millions of people wasted away and finally died. Surely among 7 - 10 million people, there had to be a number of sincere Christians. Yet no deliverance came. As I read this, thinking about what is prophesied for America, I thought what could these people possibly have done to deserve such a thing? How could their sins in 1933 be even a thousandth of what America's are now? I believe in God, I seek His face, I pray often and read the Bible daily, along with other Christian study material. The promise was not, call on Me and I will deliver you unless situations A,B, or C are going on. It is an unqualified promise to those in right standing with God. How are we to reconcile or understand these things?
I hope you get this, since it is a comment to a comment made to a post over a month ago.
There are two ways by which I reconcile God's promise 'call on Me and I will deliver' and the fact that some are allowed to endure mistreatment at the hands of their fellow man.
First, the strength and ability to withstand something as awful as torture, in my opinion, is itself a form of deliverance. I have spoken with enough individuals who like my grandfather were tortured for their faith, and what they've shared, to the last, is that their intimacy with God, and dependenc on Him only grew in their times of hardship. None of these men endured in and of their own volition or strength. God strengthened them, that they might be as living witnesses and testimonies.
The fact that God promises to deliver us does not mean our faith will never be tested, or that we will never be called to stand for the cause of Christ. It likewise does not mean that God will spare us from the persecution of the ungodly. We know Jesus said the world would hate us for His name's sake, and Paul reiterated this truth in his own way, when he said all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.
The second way I reconcile God's promises with the fact that some are allowed to suffer and endure, is by acknowledging that some things, while in this life, while in this flesh, while on this earth, will forever remain a mystery. We are not given to know all, and try as we might we never will.
What we can do, what we must do, is trust that God is in control, and if He allows a hardship upon us, He will also give us the requisite strength to endure it.
With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.
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