What If God’s Promises are Bigger than Your Trust? 3 Steps of Faith

Perhaps I get a bit too personal in this episode, but the stories are real. 

Sometimes our needs are big, and sometimes God thinks much bigger than we do. In this episode, we get real about what to do when what you see contradicts what God says.

Abraham wasn't the only one who struggled with trusting what God said, but He and we can grab hold of what will change our focus to help us believe the impossible.

*Link to the content covered in this episode:

• The Grief Recovery Program

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

I'm way too personal with you, telling you way too much. But I want to encourage you with stories that are real. These are real things I've faced with a very real God I've become persuaded is powerful. And he does what he says. Do you love God but forget to pray? Or feel guilty instead of enjoying his presence? I understand. I know how unsatisfying time with God can feel if we believe he's distant or busy. I'm Lenora, mom, Jesus lover, and former international trainer. If you're looking to feel closer with God without fear or pressure, have a greater ability to receive from him and desire more confidence to make an impact with your own life. Well, get some coffee and let's talk. If you're carrying stress and want support with prayer, I wrote a book to help you. 100 Prayers, Releasing 100 Cares. It's full of real stories, scripture, and 100 prayers for every part of life. A link to the book is in the show notes. What do you do if you feel like you have a promise from God, but it's bigger than what you can believe on your own strength? I mean, you realize that he's doing this particular thing, or I've asked him for a particular thing, whether it's a physical healing or whether it's having children or whether it's a career thing or who knows. But what do you do when you feel like it's so much beyond what you can do? Well, let's talk about it because talk about getting personal with God. It's a vulnerable place to be. It's an amazing place to be, but it doesn't mean it's always easy. I have something in my life personally right now that God spoke to me about. When I say spoke to me, it was a real sense of his presence and a sense of something he communicated to me. And I thought, what? I mean, I had become familiar with God's presence. I mean, God's always here in a sense. I mean, he's everywhere. But when you sense his actual presence on you and he's communicating something, and you know that inner witness, that inner voice, and you know you've heard it, but you can't hardly dare to believe what you're hearing. Yeah, that happened to me some time back. And I'm still, I'm not gonna say everything about it because I still am uh, in a sense, awaiting the promise. But I it was something I hadn't asked for in the first place, not directly. Basically, he was exceeding what I had talked to him about with his response of what he was going to do. And I remember feeling like a broken doll that was going back and forth in my own heart and mind between gosh, I know God's presence. But what he just communicated to me seems crazy. So I'd go to, well, this can't be God. But I'd go back to cocking my head, but I know his presence. I know this is him. But what he just said is crazy. It seems uh impossible. And like a broken doll, I kept going back and forth between those two things. I know God's presence. I know I'm hearing him, but this can't be possible. And then, after doing that about five or six times, I then I heard very so gently inside, I know it was the Holy Spirit saying, Is it more than you could ask, think, or even hope for? And I thought, oh wow, that is the only way this qualifies is under that verse. So I'm like, wow, okay, okay, and now what do I do? Later on, I was asking him, now what do I do? And one thing I heard from him was just a verse saying, seek first the kingdom of God. And he only had to say the first part. I wanted to roll my eyes and like, okay, okay, okay, seek first the kingdom of God. All these things are added to you. Well, that's pretty specific and vague at the same time. So, but that's what I've had to do. And I'll tell you someday when it when it happens. But I really understand what it is to walk in life, take steps, live day by day with a promise you can't figure out. There's several things in my life in the past where God's told me, Lenore, you're not gonna be able to figure this out. One was when I went through a divorce and we had our struggles, but I it blew me away. I did not think we'd end up in a place of divorce. Um, and that's its own story. But God finally told me, let it go. And that I wasn't gonna be able to figure out what all happened. Over time, I gained some more understanding of things, but that was hard. It was extremely a painful experience. I had to deal with loss in ways I never dreamed I would deal with. I'm someone who'd studied about covenant. I mean, the Bible's called Old Testament, New Testament. That really means old covenant, new covenant, which means, if you don't know this, it's a it's an agreement that goes beyond any contract. It's where two lives become one. And that's what God does with people. He wants a covenant with us. He gave his son, fully gave his son to purchase our life to set us free and put us back into a whole relationship with him. He wanted it in the first place, he dealt with our failure, and he's done the reconciliation. We say yes, and then we learn who we are in Christ, and we walk that out to a honestly better and better outcome. That doesn't mean there's not a lot of battles you fight in life, but if you get to know what the Bible says and what a covenant means, you find out you have a covenant partner that can handle any issue. And if he says something, he'll do it. So, back to what do you do when you feel like you have a promise and you don't know how on earth that could happen, you have to rely on your covenant partner. And he better be strong. Or I'd say he or she, but in this case, God is God. I'll just say he is all powerful. When he says something, he will do it. Now, going to a biblical example, I can go right to Abraham. I was looking that up, the story of Abraham, in preparing for this episode and reminding myself of several things because in the book of Genesis, um, you it starts talking about the story of Abraham. Now, you may or may not know that Abraham's father was already headed to to the land of Canaan with his two sons, and his grandson, who was the son of one of his third son who died, and was headed to the land of Canaan, but he stopped. He stopped in the town that had the very same name of the son who died. And God doesn't seem to do anything like this by accident. So I'll include this comment. Sometimes pain in our life, if we settle there and don't know how to resolve it, it can stop us from moving forward to promises God has given us. Sorrow is a real thing. Grief and loss is a real thing, but God is bigger than that, and God can mend your heart of the pain, and you can still end up cherishing the great memories you have and go on to move forward to fulfill the rest of what your life can be. In fact, if you want a great tool for that, I do recommend the Grief Recovery Program. You can look it up online. Um, I'll put a connection to that in my show notes. But all that to say, I think it's incredibly interesting and not an accident that that's included in the story of Abram's. His name was Abram before Abraham. Abram's story was that his father was on the way to Canaan, but stopped and spent the rest of his life in the name of a city that had the same name as his son who had passed away. So, back to Abram, there's a time where God speaks directly to Abram and says, Hey, you, I want you to go and leave your family, leave the land you're used to, and go to the land I'm gonna show you. And I'm gonna be your source, I'm gonna be your provider, and I'm making a promise to you that the whole earth is gonna be blessed through you eventually. I mean, I'm saying eventually. I don't know if that word was said at the time, eventually, but if it was just understood. But talk about a big promise. How do you take that in? It's also beautiful that God's intention was always to bless the whole world. You know, he started the book of Genesis. The first thing he did when he made mankind was bless them and tell them to multiply. And then after the flood, when everybody became so violent and just and just awful that most of humanity was wiped out in a flood, when that was over, God again blessed them and has always said, follow me, I want to bless you. It's people who walk away, but it is a great truth to know that God has always desired to bless us, bless humanity, have relationship and bless humanity. Again, it's in Genesis, you see it in the stories, you see it after the flood, and you see it again, even when he chooses Abram. I'm gonna bless the whole world through you. And of course, he does that through Jesus Christ, through the Messiah. But again, what a huge promise. So, what did Abraham do? What did I do? Back for a moment to my promise, because it has messed with my head many times, because I've thought, I did I hear God? Is this was I crazy? And one thing I do or don't do is talk to everybody about it because I know what it sounds like. So I don't tell other people most of the time, because I know I'm standing and fighting for my own faith and confidence. Now I can tell you it has sifted me in many ways. Whenever we're standing for a big promise, it is like a way to get sifted. Meaning it will bring out any way you might doubt this thing and the reasons why you might doubt it. I mean, am I worth this? Would God actually do this? Do I hear God? Did I hear God? What am I supposed to do to make it happen? Often we try to make it happen ourselves. That is one you don't want to do. Yes, walk with God, obey him if he's directing things in your life, but don't try to make the promise happen by your own strength. Back to Abram. Eventually, he tried to make the promise happen using cultural ways, because it actually was normal back then. If you couldn't produce your own child, you honestly could use someone in that was a maidservant or potentially technically possibly a slave and produce your offspring that way. That was somewhat normal back then, not for God, but for culture. And they tried to do it that way. And that wasn't God's plan. And it caused challenges because of it. So what do you do if you're trying to believe a big promise? Well, do your best to just obey God, what he's leading you to do, and don't try to manufacture it on your own. Another thing is it's really easy to talk yourself out of what God told you. Trust me, I've done it a thousand times, approximately. But if the verse that's helped me with that, Romans 4, verses 20 and 21, I'll just read it here. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. And another verse, Romans 4.18, in hope, he believed against hope that he should become the father of many nations as he had been told. So he praised God. He just kept his focus on what God could do, how big God was, not how big the promise was. And he hoped against hope. I've been through that in a different area of my life where I was convinced of something negative, but I knew that wasn't what God said, but I sure felt like my feelings were the truth. And in that case, I had to hope against what I was feeling. And really, the word hope means anchored expectation. God gave me an anchored good expectation. My feelings were an anchored negative expectation. So I had to hope in the good expectation God gave me and ignore, ignore, ignore, say no to the anchored negative expectation I was afraid of. That was a battle, but it's worth fighting. Also, Romans 4, 19. Abram says he did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body and when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb, his wife. Now, this verse is talking about how old Abram was and still believing that God would give him a child. He was around a hundred years old. Now that's a little different from us being a hundred years old now, back then, but still a big deal. I mean, naturally, it just wasn't going to happen. And he knew and considered how his wife hadn't had a child yet, which goes right back to the verse I said earlier. He grew strong in faith as he gave glory to God, as he was convinced and as he focused on the ability God has. It's also like the New Testament when it says the name of Jesus is above every name, every name, every disease name, every problem name. And we have to choose to say the name of Jesus is bigger than the name of cancer. The name of Jesus is bigger than barrenness. And I understand these things. And personally, when I was pregnant with my first son, I was told I had pre-cancer, early stages of cancer. But I was so strong at that time on my study of covenant that I my husband and I came to peace pretty quick as we prayed that everything was going to be fine. And it was. Later on, after having my son, I was tested. There was no issues with cancer, never has been ever since, more than 30 years ago. So I've experienced giving praise to God and being persuaded that he was able to do what he said. And some people might think you're you're weird or boring if you study the Bible, but if they know the fruit in your life that comes from it, it ain't boring at all. And it's certainly smart and worth your time. But also, in our family, supposedly, my husband was never going to be a father. He had had cancer in his early 20s before I met him, and before and after chemo, he was told, Yeah, it's not going to happen. You'll not have children. Now he didn't tell me that before we were married. When I found out, I said, You never told me this. And he said, Yeah, I did. I said, um, no, because I would have remembered that conversation. Somebody actually asked me, Did you really answer that way, Lenora? And I I actually did, because in this case, God had already spoken to me once about kids. Again, he's usually very simple in what he says. So it wasn't like we had a massive conversation, but he said once to me when I was just praying, talking to him about something. And for me, out of the blue, I just heard, Do you trust me with your kids? And I thought, what? I'm not where are you coming from? I wasn't talking to him about kids. I wasn't asking him about kids. I was complaining about something completely unrelated. I actually was just before getting married that he even said that to me. But because I knew that still small voice, I paused and thought, well, I better think about this and I guess I'll give him an answer. So I checked my heart because in essence he was asking me to trust him with my kids. I didn't know why. Didn't even ask him why. But I thought about it and said, Yes, I trust you with my kids. I didn't know why I was being asked, but I just answered. And that was it. That's all the conversation that we had. Didn't bring it up again. But that next year I found out supposedly my husband couldn't have kids. So when I found out he was told he could not, I could respond in a way that wasn't freaked out. Plus, I had noticed how God, and I thought it was ironic that Abraham, his name was changed from Abram to Abraham, Abraham, who's called the father of the faith, the one thing he couldn't do was have kids. Thought that was really interesting. But God did a miracle and opened up Sarah's womb, and they did, years later, have a child. And the same thing happened like the next generation. And I had really noticed that, just thought it was me in my own Bible study. I didn't know God had set me up for the fight. So in that case, that promise in my life was an easy battle. My heart was already prepared for it. I already believed God. I already trusted him, told him I trusted him in that area. And then three years into our marriage, I had a sense it's time. And within a couple months, I was pregnant. Talk about getting personal with God. I'm way too personal with you, telling you way too much. But I want to encourage you with stories that are real. These are real things I've faced with a very real God. I've become persuaded is powerful. And he does what he says. So I want to encourage you, if you're listening and you feel like there's things that you want to ask from God, or there are things you feel like he's already told you, but you don't know how on earth it's possible. I want to encourage you to put your focus on him and his ability. When I think of the future promise that hasn't happened yet, so many times I've had to just say, God, when I look at that, it doesn't make sense, the thing you promised. But if I look at you, I say, obviously it's possible. So I'm just gonna stay looking at you and saying, It's possible. I trust you, I believe you. In fact, I've said to him, you know, I'm believing you about this. Um, please tell me if I'm just ridiculous, because I don't want to be ridiculous. And I know what it sounds like when I tell myself about this promise. So please tell me to stop it if this isn't you, meaning stop believing this inside. He's only ever encouraged me, pretty quietly, pretty mellow, and sometimes in a couple pretty cool ways. But I know for you, if he's told you something and you know it's him, then focus on how big he is, not how big the promise is. Keep giving him praise, keep giving him glory because it's not about God's ego, he doesn't have pride. If you saw him in person, you couldn't help but praise him constantly. He's profoundly amazing. But because we have so many circumstances and things in this world that can grab our attention instead, we have to on purpose focus on him, on purpose focus on what he's done for other people in the Bible, what he's done for other people around you, and put yourself around other people that will be able to. Encourage you. And then you also need to be encouraging yourself. And then enjoy life. Grow in every other area. Pursue God. Pursue His kingdom first. All these other things, the promises He's given you, will be added to you. Keep Him first. He's what it's ultimately all about. And He's what will satisfy you. Once he said to me, everything you could ever want is right here with you. God Himself is right here with you. You know, if you can, don't do this if you're driving. But close your eyes and recognize God, you're here with me right now, whether I feel it or not. But often when we get really still, that's when you can sense His presence or say, God, I want to sense your presence. I need to sense your presence. Help me know you better. And one of my favorite verses, I've said this in other episodes, God, open the eyes of my understanding to the knowledge of you, to the hope of my calling, to the riches of your inheritance invested in me, and how excited you are about me as your inheritance. Thank you for what you've promised me. Thank you that you're working on it, even though I don't see it, even if it looks like the opposite is happening. I will praise you, I will trust you, and I will give you glory for this. And you're my hope and you're my source. You're the one making this happen. I can't make it happen, but I'll praise you. And let me encourage you that God loves to show off. He loves to show how good he is. He loves to help others be attracted to God because of his strength working in your life. So whether you're fighting a difficult battle or you're waiting on a very big promise, God is faithful. We will let God be our rock, and the one who gets the credit when it's done, when we walk through this, will come through it stronger if we trust in him. So I hope this encourages you because nothing is too hard for God. Hey friend, I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Would you share this with someone else who may need to hear it or go on this journey with you? Also, please take 30 seconds and leave a quick review for the show on Apple Podcasts. And of course, subscribe if you haven't already. It really makes me happy to know this podcast is helping you. And remember, a link to get my book is in the show notes. Thank you for listening. I'll see you back next Monday for another episode. Until then, remember, be kind to you because it makes it a whole lot easier to be kind to anybody else.