God’s Promises: Fulfilled in His Way

By: Nancy Missler; ©2000

How often have you “given up” on God because a promise was not fulfilled within what you considered a “reasonable” time frame? Nancy Missler give examples from the Bible, as well as from her own experience of promises fulfilled—in God’s time frame, and in God’s way!

Introduction

Sometimes God’s promises cannot be understood in a “literal” sense, so we must be careful not to bind specific verses to our finite human interpretation. The scope of God’s Word goes far beyond our own lives, and the Scriptures we receive might point to a fulfillment that’s much wider and much broader and much grander than anything we could ever imagine.

David Hazzard beautifully explains this in his book You Set My Spirit Free:

For many of the people long ago, God’s prophetic words did not come to pass in the way they expected. That was because, like us, they did not seek God’s higher view first and interpreted what He told them from their own self-serving viewpoint—in the wrong way, that is. They also looked for absolutely literal fulfillment of God’s Word, ignoring the fact that He was addressing spiritual conditions.^[1]

Here are some examples of this.

In Genesis 15:7, God told Abraham, “I am the Lord who brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it.” Abraham believed that to be God’s personal promise to him, because in Genesis 15:8, he asks the Lord, “whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?” Because Abraham was thinking with his rational mind, he naturally misinterpreted God’s promise. The possession of the land would not occur in Abraham’s lifetime, but some 400 years later through Abraham’s offspring.

What a tragedy it would have been if Abraham had sought to immediately possess the land in his own strength! And how disillusioned his children would have been if they’d watched their father die before the promised fulfillment. But because Abraham continued to ask, seek and knock upon the door of the Lord, God revealed not only His will, but also understanding of His will.^[2]

Another example of God’s “perfect way” of fulfilling His promise takes place in the life of Jacob. While journeying to Egypt to reunite with his son, Joseph, God appears to Jacob and tells him, “…fear not to go down into Egypt; for I will there make of thee a great nation. I will go down with thee into Egypt; and I will also surely bring thee up again.” (Genesis 46:3-4)

If you were to hear God speak those same words to you, wouldn’t you naturally assume that He was going to let you return home in your lifetime? Why, then, did Jacob die in Egypt?^[3] Because it was God’s will that this prophecy be fulfilled at a later time, when Moses led Jacob’s offspring out of Egypt and into the Promised Land! When Jacob lay dying, did he curse God for being unfaithful? No, he had come to unconditionally trust in the Love of God, so he died still believing in God’s promise to him. Sure enough, years later his children brought his body back to Israel where he was buried, just as God had promised.^[4]

One last example: Remember the two men on the road to Emmaus who were in such despair because Christ had just been crucified? (Luke 24:13-21) As they walked together, the risen Lord approached them. They supposed Him to be “a stranger in Jerusalem,” so they shared their heartbreak. “We thought that it was He [Jesus] who was going to redeem Israel.” They had clung to the amazing promises of Christ, and naturally assumed that He was going to quickly overthrow the Romans and set up His kingdom in Jerusalem. But on the day of His crucifixion, their earthly hopes were shattered.

There was no way they could ever have imagined, through their logical minds, that Christ’s promises were true, but pertained to His Second Coming!^[5]

“Lord, You Promised!”

Hebrews tells us that there are many other Old Testament men who believed God’s promises, but never saw them fulfilled.^[6] God’s Word to these men did not turn out as they each expected, because many of them understood them in their own natural and literal way. This is exactly how I felt about the specific promises that God gave me on that mountaintop in 1990! Because He did not fulfill them according to my own understanding and my own time reference, I began to struggle with despair and defeat.

How many of you are in a similar situation?

How many of you have waited for God to fulfill specific promises concerning physical healing, spiritual revival, business deals, ministry opportunities, salvation of loved ones or personal finances and yet, never had an answer? As we wait for these promises to be fulfilled, our hearts can literally become sick and our faith can be shaken to its core.^[7]

We logically dismiss our deferred hope by saying, “Well, I guess God really didn’t make that promise.” And before too long, we’re also saying, “Maybe I’ve never heard God correctly. In fact, maybe God doesn’t even care about me!” Misunderstanding gives birth to impatience, impatience gives birth to disappointment, disappointment gives birth to doubt, doubt gives birth to unbelief, and unbelief gives birth to bitterness. That’s Satan’s formula for transforming a believer into an apostate.

Although God never does anything without reason, human beings cannot always fathom His reasons. “For the Spirit is living and full of meaning, far more than literal words themselves, and it has the miraculous ability to affect lives far beyond all we can imagine or expect.”^[8] The Lord’s Love for us is perfect and, therefore, it’s critical that we trust Him to fulfill His promises in His way and in His time.^[9] Let us not be dismayed or disappointed by the mysterious ways of God, for He dwells in light inaccessible…hid from our eyes and His ways are past finding out.

As Max Lucado so eloquently says, “When we can’t see His hand, we should always remember to trust His heart.”

There is also a wonderful quote in Jack Hayford’s book, Pursuing the Will of God, that perfectly describes the dilemma we often find ourselves in when God’s promises are not fulfilled in the way we thought they would be:

Sometimes when life throws us a curve, or maybe a whole flurry of them, we experience sentiments similar to this… “Lord, You promised so and so, and I even heard You speaking to my heart…” or “I read this in the Word and You seemed to say it was something for me…” or “The Spirit of God prompted me with this thought, and I thought I understood this thing about my life and my future, but Lord, I don’t see anything happening. It puzzles me. Did I make a mistake? Is something wrong with me?

Many of us would profit by going back and helping Noah build the ark for a hundred years. Noah just went about his business, hammering nails, slopping pitch, and punching that old time clock for a century, not seeing any evidence that what he believed would happen was taking place. But he hung in there through those long, dry years. And the rains came, just as God had said. Boy, did they come!

I remember so well the testimony of a woman who had believed the Lord would save her husband after she herself accepted Christ. He finally did receive the Lord—two weeks before he died. And that was forty years after her conversion. She prayed for her man and trusted the Lord for his salvation for forty years! The Lord does get the job done…but not necessarily on our timetable.”^[10]

Holding on to God or His Promises?

All our confusion about hearing and believing God’s promises occurs because we are relying on our own understanding, instead of resting on His Word. When we do this, we limit God and we hedge Him in on all sides.

God assured the prophet Habakkuk that His promises would come to pass at the appointed time (2:3) yet only He alone knows the secret of that appointed time. What makes us think we can understand His perfect plan? Our natural mind, which is so influenced by our soulish thoughts, emotions and desires, often tells us that God’s promises are late. Even the psalmist cried out in despair: “Doth His promise fail for evermore?” (Psalm 77:8)

The Bible assures us, however, that God is never late.^[11] He is the Lord, and He will always do things perfectly in His timing; thus, it’s up to us to change our wrong perceptions about Him. (These are some of the “self-centered” ways that God is desirous of purging from our souls.) We must lay all our misconceptions at the foot of the cross. We must believe in His faithfulness and His lovingkindness. Once again, when we can’t see His hand, we must trust His Heart. This is the only way to survive the “silence” of the Lord. God will never lie,^[12] nor will He fail to fulfill His promise at the “appointed time.”

So what is our part in this waiting process? Our part is simply to believe and trust in Him. Let us choose to be like Abraham who “did not waver in unbelief, but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully persuaded that what He had promised, He was also able to perform.” (Romans 4:20-21 NAS) For God will always “be mindful of His covenant.” (Psalm 111:5)

The question we must always ask ourselves is: are we holding onto God or to His Promises?

Notes

1. ↑ You Set My Spirit Free, David Hazzard, page 114.
2. ↑ Genesis 17:22 and 18:10 are another example of God’s promise to Abraham and Sarah to have a baby in their old age. Although God’s promise was true, it was not fulfilled until ten years later (Genesis 21:2).
3. ↑ Genesis 49:22.
4. ↑ Genesis 50:13.
5. ↑ See also Jeremiah 20:7-18; Judges 20:11-48.
6. ↑ Hebrews 11:13, 39.
7. ↑ Proverbs 13:12.
8. ↑ You Set My Spirit Free, David Hazzard, page 116.
9. ↑ Hebrews 10:36.
10. ↑ Pursuing the Will of God, Jack Hayford, page 86-87, emphasis added.
11. ↑ 2 Peter 3:9.
12. ↑ 1 Samuel 15:29.