Provision for the Promise

I may have shared my experience before, so pardon me if you've heard this story before. One day, standing at my stove cooking, I heard the Lord say, "Yours is a life of faith." I felt like the teenage girl whose dad just told her to clean her room, again. I felt like stomping off in frustration. "Like, dad, again." Why do I have to keep doing this faith thing? Over and over and over again! Can it just be over already, so I can have what I need to do the things You've called me to do? Why does it always have to be an act of intense faith?

It was a familiar feeling, one reminiscent of an experience years before that I will never forget, when He asked me, as I sat in my office, "Do you trust Me?" It felt like, here we go again. If you understood my journey, you would know. See, my journey and experiences with Father God have been, and continue to be, intense, faith-required journeys. Start businesses, put on conferences, open homes for women and children, produce stage plays and sitcoms, and film a movie… But first, leave your job so you are living entirely reliant and dependent on Me. I mean, who does this? That would be me.

One of my good friends describes it as "crazy faith." Trust me when I tell you, this was not the journey I desired for myself. I would have preferred stability, predictability, and knowing how everything was going to work out. But Father God had another plan, one that required me to trust Him completely. After years of living like this, there are many moments when it becomes hard and trying. You have to die to self often because you cannot have or operate in pride. You have to learn and understand that the vulnerability required is to God first, not to man. This is key because if you become vulnerable to man, you become subject to the fickleness of man's heart, forgetting that it's God who provides, not people. They are the vessels He uses, but they are subject to Him, too. Sometimes people can make you feel as if they are Jehovah Jireh. Never forget that the One who calls you to it is the One who provides for you in it.

So, here I am again, on another escapade of intense faith, which keeps me before the Father in prayer, seeking His face, guidance, direction, instruction, and favor. I literally have no idea how, at any moment, what He has called me to do will happen. I just know that it is, and so far, the answers and provisions have faithfully come in the 11th hour. The questions, however, are growing fewer; the trust is increasing; the faith is bolder; and the amazement is greater, as His faithfulness leaves an even bigger smile on my face and an even warmer joy in my heart. Through each adventure, I get to learn more about Him, see more of His faithfulness, watch Him work miracles, touch hearts, and literally move mountains in accordance with His will.

So, if you've ever thrown tantrums, asked Father God why, or become weary in well-doing because the journey has been long… count it all joy! You were chosen, and if you were chosen, you were also equipped.

Find confidence and assurance in knowing Father God has already laid out the steps before you. He just requires your faith, trust, and obedience. He's going to do the rest!

Here is a nugget for you: Be open to being purged because this process also includes dying to self. You have to see yourself — the areas that can potentially interfere with where He's taking you and what He's doing in and through you — honestly through the eyes of Father God and surrender those areas to Him.

Be blessed!
Prophetess Ceola J.