THY KINGDOM COME (6)

“²¹But after long abstinence from food, then Paul stood in the midst of them and said, “Men, you should have listened to me, and not have sailed from Crete and incurred this disaster and loss. ²²And now I urge you to take heart, for there will be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship. ²³For there stood by me this night an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I serve, ²⁴saying, ‘Do not be afraid, Paul; you must be brought before Caesar; and indeed God has granted you all those who sail with you.’ ²⁵Therefore take heart, men, for I believe God that it will be just as it was told me.” (Acts 27:21-25 NKJV).

The greatest service human beings can render to God is to prepare for Him a heart on which He can implant His word. It was said of Ezra that he “prepared his heart to seek the Law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach statutes and ordinances in Israel” (Ezra 7:10 NKJV). Whenever God sees a heart in which His word can incubate, germinate, grow and blossom, He bypasses a million others to bless such a person.  I strongly believe that was the one reason Mary held such a strong attraction to God’s heart. Her heart is very fertile for the word of God. After the Angel announced that she was to become the mother of Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit, she made a declaration that revealed the nature of her heart, “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38 NKJV).  Mary received the word of God with joy and believed it with all her heart. There was no vacillation on her part inspite of the obvious risk accepting the word of God would expose her to. Her heart was ready for the word of God. She had the habit of pondering the mysteries about Jesus in her heart (Luke 2:19, 51). God designed the human heart to hold and meditate on His word day and night.

Mary’s proneness to receive and believe the word of God with no reservations was the obvious reason for her blessedness. Elizabeth affirmed this truth when she said to Mary, “You are blessed because you believed that the Lord would do what he said” (Luke 1:45 NLT). The Kingdom of God became an experiential reality in Mary because she believed that God would do what He promised, notwithstanding the practical impossibility of that promise. It was and still is, and will always be practically impossible for a woman to become pregnant without the involvement of a man.  When true faith is in operation, impossibility becomes illogical. Impossibility made no sense to Jesus and the early apostles. It should not make to us either, because of the commission of Christ on us to do greater works than He did.

To believe is to be persuaded about the absolute truthfulness of God and the infallibility of His promise.  It is to place unwavering confidence in God, assured that He will never retract on His commitments.  Such trust comes from well-grounded intimate relationship with Him, and not merely from head knowledge of the Bible. Paul spoke from such a relationship to encourage His fellow sailors in the midst of catastrophe, “Therefore take heart, men, for I believe God that it will be just as it was told me.”  Paul had a rock-strong confidence that God will do what He told Him about the difficulty they were facing.  When God commits His word to a believer, the believer must declare such Words with faith for them to effectuate.  One has not truly believed a word from God until he or she boldly declares it publicly.

To believe effectively, the word of God must saturate your heart and overflow from your mouth.  Without the synergy between the heart and the mouth, believe becomes a mere wishful thinking. “For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Romans 10:10 NKJV). What is believed in the heart and declared with the mouth becomes a reality. When you believe and fail to declare what you believe, your faith becomes a stillbirth.  When you declare what you have not believed in the heart, your faith becomes phoney.  Paul reveals the right combination that births the miraculous. “And since we have the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, “I believed and therefore I spoke,” we also believe and therefore speak” (2 Corinthians 4:13 NKJV). Speaking your belief is God’s way of unleashing the creative force He has endowed us with. Make a habit of believing the promises of God in the bible and boldly declaring them until they become your experiential reality to the glory of God.