The Standard of the Promise

♥ 10 MIN READ-

What has God promised you? This is not a rhetorical question. I truly wonder? What has the process of this promised been like for you?

In this phase of my life, God has promised me some big things that are so far out of the realm of what I think is possible it’s hard for me to wrap my mind around. Some promises simply require you to believe and receive but others require you to level up and live at a new standard. It’s more than just a change of behavior but a seismic shift that changes the way you operate on every level. These promises require a more extensive process. We all love the idea of the big promises but check your Bible, every big promise came with a process that was no walk in the park. So my question is, you want the promise, but can you live at the standard of the promise? Because simply meeting it isn’t enough. It’s not an Airbnb, it’s your permanent residence.

Christianity 101 teaches us that to get the promise we must receive, but the details on how to receive sometimes get a little gray. So here is what I’ve learned.

 

What I See Clearly

The process is about seeing Him, seeing you, and seeing them clearly. That is the point of the process and the purpose of the promise. Without an adjustment in each area, the standard of the promise can’t be maintained.

 

Let me explain.

 

Defining the Standard

First, our goal is to live at the standard of the promise so let me define that. Every promise that God gives us must be sustained and maintained. Now it is on God to sustain it- He causes things to come together to make it possible for us to have the promise, but maintenance is our part. It is my responsibility to take full advantage of the opportunity and create an environment that the promise can thrive in. It’s on me to protect it, nurture it, and ensure its purpose is achieved. That’s how the promise partnership works. But many of our promise experiences are like mine, you are given the promise of children at a time when you can’t even keep a plant alive or given the dream of running your own business when you’re at a job that you hate (this last one isn’t mine just in case my employers are reading this. I love my job!). Sometimes getting to the standard of the promise is a process. We have to develop the sight, the skills, and discernment to prepare and protect the promise so it won’t die the second it’s delivered into our hands. God’s protection plan is the process.

 

 

Explaining the Process

The process is whatever steps God takes you through to receive what He’s promised you. The promise process is always customized.

Our job isn’t to make the promise fit. It’s to allow it time to come to fruition without requiring it to make sense immediately. When we rush our promise we threaten its maturation because our promises don’t need high-pressure environments to mature, we do. We mature to the place of the promise. We rise to its standard and meet it there. All they need is faith, discipline, and the willingness to believe for them to yield fruit. They just need to be believed and received.

 

 

Seeing Him

Let me be the first to tell on myself, many times I have been at war with the process. Forever frustrating, it seemed like it was always so unnecessarily complicated, annoyingly drawn out, and painful for no apparent reason. Now honestly some of this is dramatics and some is entitlement but our response to the process can still tell us a lot about our perspective. Mine taught me a lot about how I saw God.

So often in the process, I have felt like God was doing something to me rather than for me. It felt like punishment, withholding, so completely unfair and unwarranted. But the “woe is me” response just showed that I didn’t truly know Him, that I didn’t trust Him, and that my love for Him didn’t supersede my love for the promise. An unbalanced desire will hinder you in the process. This has to be corrected before you can truly move forward.

 

What I See Clearly

The process is not about you facing God, it’s about you learning to partner with God to face yourself. When you take more ownership of the promise than the process you’ll fight the process to get the promise. God controls the process so when we fight it, we’re really fighting Him.

 

The thought that God is withholding from us should be a lie that we confront whenever it comes up. Honestly, it makes no sense. God only gives to us. Everything we are and everything we have is a gift that we didn’t ask for and didn’t earn. At any point, something is taken we should trust that we’ll get what we truly need back. God never takes He only exchanges. That’s the truth. That’s the mindset.

The process is meant to show us a new revelation of God. We should come through it with a deeper understanding and a stronger connection to Him. That is the gold at the end of the rainbow and that’s what will enable us to live at the standard. This first piece is key. You cant pass go without it.

The truth is we complicate things and cause ourselves unnecessary pain when we fight the process by trying to do things our way. Our lack of trust is one of the greatest threats to successfully and quickly completing the process and receiving the promise.

 

A Message to You

The process is the quickest path to the promise. It is always an act of love, never punishment, and until you see that it cannot be completed. Changed perspective is graduation. It is what makes forward action possible. Without it, we aimlessly wander, futilely calling our cure a curse. Now and forever you have to convince yourself that because God is in control of it, every part of the process is necessary.

 

 

Seeing Me

My Granny always said people do the best they think they can and the older I get the more I see the truth of this statement. Not just about others, but for me. Most of the revelations I have gotten have involved shifting my thinking so I could see the ways I was living below my best. So consider with me, Is it possible you could be living below your standard? Is there more not only for you but more to you? What if your perceived best was never your best at all? Could you be wrong about you? Are you ready to confront the lie, reveal the truth, live the response? Because that’s what the process comes to do.

We so quickly try to live something out that we don’t develop the foundation for. We charge toward the promise and get slapped in the face with the process because we don’t stop to consider all the ways we could be wrong about who we are. The process comes to fix our broken identity because only a healed person can receive the promise. Now make no mistake about it, I didn’t say perfect, but understand that a certain amount of wholeness is required to maintain the standard of the promise you’re receiving. Healing your identity is part of the process because you need to see yourself clearly to truly understand the purpose of the promise otherwise you’re brokenness will cause you to abuse it.

 

What I See Clearly

There are lies hidden in our past that affect our present and will hinder the promises of our future, so every process confronts a lie and reveals a truth that we have disregarded or rejected. The promise demands that we receive it before we move forward.

 

Every promise confronts a lie that we’ve been living that has become so normal to us that it seems like an undeniable truth and a part of our identity. There is evidence to back it up and memories to reinforce its position in our lives, but when we separate ourselves from it we see all the ways it held us back and we learn who we truly are.

Need an example? My process demanded I learn to use my voice. Growing up as the youngest I was shy and not as confident about speaking out as my older sisters. I didn’t feel like people listened to me so I would stay quiet. When I got older I was more vocal because I was determined to be heard and make people listen. That worked for a time and then God told me to start this blog. I hesitated because deep down I was still that little girl who needed my voice to be validated because I wasn’t quite convinced I would say something valuable enough for people to listen. The lie that that fear was based on had to be confronted before I could fully step into this promise. Sometimes the process requires us to heal from the past- past hurts, lies, trauma, fears…they all have a way of tainting our perspective and delaying us from moving forward.

The truth is the process is meant to cause us to confront and remove specific things in our hearts and minds that create separation between us and God. Like a video game, we’re looking for a specific clue that will unlock the next level, but our sight has to be corrected to see it. The process only frustrates us when we’re unwilling to let go of the false identity and narratives we’ve believed about ourselves and God. The promise always requires a storyline change. A discovery. A revelation.

In my case, the narrative I was living out was that my voice truly wouldn’t impact the change God promised me and that in essence, He was setting me up for failure. Looking at it all spelled out makes it easy to see how asinine it is, but until you clearly put it out there the ridiculousness is camouflaged. This storyline had to change and I needed the truth to set me free to receive my promise.

 

 

Seeing Them

So often my promise has been tied to my deepest desire and my greatest fear. What I wanted most was always connected with the possibility for the worst-case scenario. The threat of it created the need for my faith and the opportunity for a miracle. Make no mistake about it. The process was designed for you but to yield maximum growth the pressure is amplified to show your weak spots.

 

What I See Clearly

The process is meant to bring out of your heart the good, the bad, and the ugly. But it shouldn’t stop there. We should end with a purified heart and vision.

 

I believe we are meant to mature to the place of the promise and one of the biggest tests of maturity is determining if we want the promise for the right reasons. Do we truly want it or the fantasy? Often we romanticize the promise. Hyper-focusing on all of the good and benefits without seeing the reality of the promise. We want the promise given because we see what we will get but the mature perspective is to see what we can give. The promise is never for our benefit only. When we see the reality of the promise, when we’re willing to do the work, and when we crave it for the right reasons then we’re maturing to the place of the promise.

The closer you get to the promise your desires should change. They should deepen and mature. God should give you an understanding of who the promise should benefit and those it will serve and how it is meant to benefit. He should give you a heart for the people the promise is for. It should turn your eyes from you to them. Every promise should sharpen your vision. Don’t refuse to look where He directs. Let your vision evolve.

Instead of focusing on the benefits, focus on cultivating a heart for the ones the promise is meant to attract. The promise is an investment. It’s meant to position you so they can find you, not just to make you comfortable so you can do you. The response to the promise process should be growth, discipline, and gratefulness.

 

 

Pursuing the Promise. Maintaining the Standard

Hearing the promise is just the beginning. There’s a whole lot of life meant to be lived after that first step. We often rush toward the promise impatiently wanting it now. We are rarely in danger of losing it, but our behavior will either move us toward or away from it. Forward motion can be deceptive. We can feel like we’re moving forward yet, in reality, our behavior is propelling us backward. The promise is never running from us but in our disobedience, we are running away from it thinking we’ve found a shortcut or easy road. But every shortcut will shortchange us and rushing causes delay. There is one right way to get the promise. So seek God to find what the custom process for you is.

When we are willing to do the work for the promise we are saying we honor it enough to grow so it will last. It doesn’t have to come easy or quickly because I don’t have to be convinced that it’ll be worth it. I am confident that I can give whatever’s required. I trust that I’m equipped. That I’m protected and that it is all necessary. When we don’t believe these things are true we try to take shortcuts or avoid the hard parts of the process. But the process was tailored for us so cutting any part is cutting the promise. Wanting the promise isn’t enough. You’ve also got to want to get it His way.

 

A Message to You

Faith is progressional. It builds. New promises build on older ones. New revelations tie to past one. If a truth is missing from your foundation it must be retrieved or you’ll never be able to bear the weight of the promise. The standard will be a burden because you never developed the grace (that comes from living the truth) to sustain it. The pain of the process comes from the gaps in our faith. We feel the pain of the pressure because we try to stack new promises on top of old lies and truths that never fully established. We need to rebuild. The lessons we missed we have to go back and get before we can move forward. This is the retrieval process. The reaping all we lost. So go back and get what’s yours. Your promise is waiting. You can’t live at the standard without it. This is what the process is made for.

 

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«Consider This»

• What has God promised you and what has your process been like?
• What false narrative are you living out? What storyline change do you need to make to move forward in the promise?

Let’s have a conversation about this. Share your thoughts below.