Glen Hartline

I have been looking at a certain item I’ve wanted for a while now, and after eight months of obsessing over it (at least that’s what my family says I’ve been doing) I finally placed the order. Now this particular item can take six to eight weeks to be produced and then delivered to me. After eight months what is another six to eight weeks, right? Wrong! Time seems to have come to a standstill in anticipation of a day when I finally receive the thing I have been desiring and waiting for. Even the knowledge that the day of delivery is virtually just around the corner doesn’t seem to quench the pain of anticipation.

Thinking about this last night, numerous Christians waiting to receiving something from God came to mind. Many who are waiting for healing, some for financial breakthrough, others for provision in many different areas. The key to all this is that they are anxiously waiting for what will happen someday. I hear it all the time. “I know God is going to heal me!” or “I know it’s God’s will to heal, and He will heal me someday.” Although those statements seem to be from people who are in faith, the reality is that they aren’t. They are in hope, not faith.

You see, faith is the substance of things hoped for; it is the reality of what God has already provided, even in stark contrast to what appears to be going on around you. Faith isn’t just mentally agreeing with what it says in scripture, or even what you have been told through a prophetic word, it is knowing it in your heart to be true regardless of what your circumstances are telling you. We are not to be a people who continually live in hope, but those that live in the continual provision of those things hoped for.

In Ephesians it says that God has already given us all things that pertain to life and godliness. It doesn’t say that He will provide it when its needed, scripture says He has already done it. Jesus embraced the whipping post over 2,000 years ago for our sickness and disease, because it says in 1Peter that by His stripes you WERE healed. It doesn’t say that if you are in faith God will heal you, it is declaring that in faith you will realize the reality of that very thing God has already provided for you.

When God created Adam and Eve, He didn’t create them on the first or second day, making them tread water, or sit and wait until everything else was done to be able to enjoy what God had for them. No, God created them on the sixth day, actually it was at the end of the sixth day, so that everything they could possible want was already there for them to partake of. They just entered in to the Sabbath rest with Him, enjoying both there union with Him, and everything He had already provided. It’s the same with us. We too are in union with Him, and we too just need to partake of what He has already done through Jesus on the cross. It just a matter of perception. Can you see it?

Ask Holy Spirit today to show you how your need has already been provided. Ask Him reveal the reality of it to your heart, then go about your life with the assurance that He will.