GOD IS PREPARING YOU FOR GREAT THINGS - Don’t let your dream die in the valley! If you’re in a season of refining, lean in. Trust the loving hand of your precious Savior and know that He will lead you to the other side. Refuse a sense of entitlement and don’t demand to be understood. Instead, humble yourself and seek to understand what the Lord is doing around you. He will faithfully lead you and you will be strengthened as you go. On the other side of this refining time is a fresh perspective and new mercies. God puts dreams in our hearts and writes a destiny over our lives. And if we trust Him enough to take Him at His word, we will find ourselves on a journey toward the fulfillment of that dream. Unfortunately, the path that takes us to the promise is always wrought with thickets and thorns. Nothing worth having ever comes easy or without opposition. Storms will come, lions will roar, and our fears will be confronted. God allows the path to be difficult because He intends on refining us and preparing us for our place of promise. He is intent on extracting from us, that which our enemy would love to leverage against us. God loves us too much to promote us before we are ready. And so, as we follow His lead, we will at different times, find ourselves in a valley – a valley of decision. Marriages die there. Dreams die there too. The flesh dies hard and unfortunately for many, they’ve opted to let their dream die before they’d ever allow their flesh to be confronted.

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God is preparing you for great things

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Don’t let your dream die in the valley! If you’re in a season of refining, lean in. Trust the loving hand of your precious Savior and know that He will lead you to the other side. Refuse a sense of entitlement and don’t demand to be understood. Instead, humble yourself and seek to understand what the Lord is doing around you. He will faithfully lead you and you will be strengthened as you go. On the other side of this refining time is a fresh perspective and new mercies.

Susie Larson

 

God puts dreams in our hearts and writes a destiny over our lives.

And if we trust Him enough to take Him at His word, we will find ourselves on a journey toward the fulfillment of that dream.

Unfortunately, the path that takes us to the promise is always wrought with thickets and thorns.

Nothing worth having ever comes easy or without opposition.

Storms will come, lions will roar, and our fears will be confronted.

God allows the path to be difficult because He intends on refining us and preparing us for our place of promise.

He is intent on extracting from us, that which our enemy would love to leverage against us.

God loves us too much to promote us before we are ready.

And so, as we follow His lead, we will at different times, find ourselves in a valley – a valley of decision.

Marriages die there.

Dreams die there too.

The flesh dies hard and unfortunately for many, they’ve opted to let their dream die before they’d ever allow their flesh to be confronted.

We all have weak spots and areas of inconsistency in our character.

Until we see Jesus face to face, we will need His guidance and correction. He wants to take us from strength to strength; from glory to glory.

Ephesians 3:20 tells us that He wants to do abundantly above and beyond ALL that we could ever ask or think, but there’s a clincher in this verse… it’s according to His work within us.

To the extent that He’s allowed to work in us, will be the extent that He does great things through us.

After pondering this idea a little more, I envisioned a valley of dry bones.

Bones from marriages, relationships, and dreams abandoned because many people refused to die to themselves, to humble themselves, and to let God have His way in their lives.

Don’t let your dream die in the valley!

If you’re in a season of refining, lean in.

Trust the loving hand of your precious Savior and know that He will lead you to the other side.

Refuse a sense of entitlement and don’t demand to be understood.

Instead, humble yourself and seek to understand what the Lord is doing around you.

He will faithfully lead you and you will be strengthened as you go.

On the other side of this refining time is a fresh perspective and new mercies.

Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God; in due time you will be lifted up and honored before a watching world.

Here’s my question for you: Do you have a sense of how God is using your current circumstances to prepare you for a great calling?

God never calls us to do something for Him that He does not empower us to do if we are willing to do the work and time. Please, take the time to get to know God in an intimate way.

As your relationship with Him grows, you move up in rank and are assigned harder missions. Your purpose on earth is to shine God’s love to a lost, dying world.

Your mission, if you should choose to accept it, is waiting for you!

Open your ears and your heart to the Lord and be excited about your new future serving Him in truth and spirit.

God has made it possible for you to know Him and experience an amazing change in your own life.

Serve Him.

Wait on Him.

And expect … for He is able to do much much more than you can ask or imagine.

Settle that sin issue ...

“Father God, I confess I am a sinner and my sins have separated me from You.

I am truly sorry. I now want to turn away from my past sinful life and live a new life pleasing to You.

Please forgive me, and help me avoid sinning again.

I believe that Your Son, Jesus Christ died for my sins, was resurrected from the dead, is alive, and hears my prayer.

I invite Jesus to become the Lord of my life, to rule and reign in my heart from this day forward. Thank You that according to Your Word, I am now born again.

Please send Your Holy Spirit to help me obey You, and to do Your will for the rest of my life. I promise to study Your Word – the Bible.

Use me for Your glory.

In Jesus' Name I pray. Amen.”

Susie Larson, host of Susie Larson Live, engages in conversations that bring Scripture to life, and shares stories that inspire you to last long and finish strong.

Faith Radio is a group of stations located around the country that offers a blend of preaching, teaching, and compelling conversation to help connect faith to life. Whether it’s faith, family, or finances, Faith Radio offers encouragement and insight every day.

But we are so much more than a radio station. Right now, you’re visiting our website, myfaithradio.com. This digital space we occupy serves as an additional arm to the ministry of Faith Radio. This website brings you deeper into the content we broadcast every day on-air, and also offers additional resources that are relevant to meeting you where you are in your faith journey, and in your life season. We count it a privilege to be invited into your life.

https://myfaithradio.com/2015/god-is-preparing-you-for-great-things/

HOW TO ACTIVATE FULLY PERSUADED FAITH - To live fully persuaded, you need to become a person who understands what it means to be under authority — who knows how to obey orders. God is the Master, and when He gives orders, we are to obey them immediately. That’s the kind of faith that is pleasing to God — to have faith in the One who gives the orders. You are not just a child of God — you’re a soldier in the army of the Lord, and your promotion comes from following orders. When you look past your circumstances, take God at His Word, and obey without hesitancy, you will activate fully persuaded faith that brings manifested victory every time - you can live a life that supersedes all reason and expectation - you can live in victory - “And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform.” - No matter what your need is today — finances, healing, promotion or a miracle in your family — only one thing is needed to bring it to pass: fully persuaded faith. The good news? You can activate your fully persuaded faith today and start taking what rightfully belongs to you. What kind of faith does it take to move the mountains in your life? The money you need, the healing you’re seeking, the family restoration you desire so deeply… what kind of faith will deliver it into your hands? What is fully persuaded faith? It is highly developed faith — the kind that cannot be moved and always takes the victory.

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How to Activate Fully Persuaded Faith

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To live fully persuaded, you need to become a person who understands what it means to be under authority — who knows how to obey orders. God is the Master, and when He gives orders, we are to obey them immediately. That’s the kind of faith that is pleasing to God — to have faith in the One who gives the orders. You are not just a child of God — you’re a soldier in the army of the Lord, and your promotion comes from following orders. When you look past your circumstances, take God at His Word, and obey without hesitancy, you will activate fully persuaded faith that brings manifested victory every time - you can live a life that supersedes all reason and expectation - you can live in victory

Kenneth Copeland

 

 

“And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform.” – Romans 4:21 (KJV)

 

No matter what your need is today — finances, healing, promotion or a miracle in your family — only one thing is needed to bring it to pass: fully persuaded faith.

The good news? You can activate your fully persuaded faith today and start taking what rightfully belongs to you.

What kind of faith does it take to move the mountains in your life?

The money you need, the healing you’re seeking, the family restoration you desire so deeply… what kind of faith will deliver it into your hands?

Fully persuaded faith

What is fully persuaded faith?

It is highly developed faith — the kind that cannot be moved and always takes the victory.

It takes possession of everything that grace has made available and doesn’t leave anything on the table.

When you find out what it means to be fully persuaded, and what it takes to stay that way, your whole life will change.

When you look past your circumstances, take God at His Word, and obey without hesitancy, you will activate fully persuaded faith and see manifested victory every day.

1. Look Past Your Circumstances

“And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body.” – Romans 4:19 (KJV)

Have you ever noticed when you begin to stand on the Word of God, your circumstances seem to cry out all the louder?

Symptoms in your body seem stronger than ever, your bank book shouts, “Mayday!” and your family seems to get along even less! Why?

If the devil can get you to focus on your circumstances, or what seems real in the natural, he has your eyes right where he wants them — off the Word of God.

He knows if you’re looking at natural circumstances, that is likely what you’ll speak.

And whatever comes out of your mouth is what will come to pass. That’s spiritual law.

So, whatever has come out of your mouth in the past is what you’re living right now.

You might say, “Well, I don’t believe that.”

Not believing it doesn’t make it any less true. A law is a law.

At one time, people didn’t know what gravity was. They had all kinds of ideas that you could fall off the earth in one place or another — they really believed that.

But just believing it didn’t make it true, because there is a law of gravity.

Spiritual law brought that law into existence, and it’s the same spiritual law that gives your words power.

Abraham received the promises of God again and again, because he was fully persuaded and refused to look at his natural circumstances.

When God promised to make him the father of many nations, he didn’t consider his own body, his feelings or the medical facts.

He only considered what God had said. He was fully persuaded.

Another great example is the time when Smith Wigglesworth went to visit a church member whose family member had recently passed away.

Smith and his wife went to pay their respects. When they arrived, there were two glass French doors separating the entry from the parlor.

Behind the glass doors was the dead man lying in the coffin.

Smith walked in, didn’t say hello to anyone — just opened the glass doors, walked up to the coffin, yanked the lid open, and pulled the man out of the box.

He stood him in the corner, pointed his finger at him, and said, “In the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk!” 

The man slid down the wall. He went over, caught him by the suit, picked him back up and said, “I said, walk!” 

He slid down on the floor again.

Finally, Mr. Wigglesworth went over, picked him up, threw him in the corner and said, “I said, walk!” 

And the two of them came walking out of the parlor, shouting, praising and glorifying God.

That’s the definition of looking past circumstances and being fully persuaded!

2. Take God at His Word

“And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform.” – Romans 4:21 (KJV)

Most of us truly desire to believe — fully believe — God’s promises.

We want to receive them, we want to be fully persuaded.

Yet, often, the battle is on to defeat unbelief and walk in that perfect faith that doesn’t doubt for a moment.

So, how do you get to the place where you are fully persuaded?

If it came by praying for it, Jesus would have said so. But it doesn’t. You have to reach out and take it.

The kind of faith you need comes only one way: by hearing the Word of God.

You can’t feel it coming. If you’re trying to recognize it by the way you feel — you’ll miss it.

Being fully persuaded means you know that something is God’s will for you.

How do you know if something is God’s will? By whether it happens or not? No.

The Word of God is the will of God. All the promises of God are yes and amen.

So why would God promise you something that was not His will for you to have?

When you’re fully persuaded, nothing can keep you from taking God at His Word.

No “fact” is bigger than the truth in your mind and spirit, and you cannot be moved.

Abraham never moved from God’s promise that he would be the father of many nations, even when natural circumstances continued to challenge the promise after Isaac’s birth.

By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice.

He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” – Hebrews 11:17-18 (NIV)

When you take God at His Word, if you see or feel something that is opposite from the Word, you will not be moved by it because you are moved only by God’s Word.

You see, Abraham wasn’t “trying” to believe God — he wasn’t just mentally assenting to it.

He had immersed himself in God’s Word until that Word was more real to him than the things he could see.

If you don’t have that kind of faith for healing or finances or anything else right now, then stay in the Word until you get it!

After all, “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17, KJV).

Read, study, meditate, listen to good, faith-filled teaching, watch the Believer’s Voice of Victory broadcasts EVERY DAY until God’s Word about your situation is more real to you than the circumstances you can see with your natural eyes. 

Keep on keeping on until, like Abraham, you don’t stagger at the promise of God through unbelief, but grow strong in faith as you give praise and glory to God (Romans 4:20, KJV).

Being fully persuaded does not come by experience in the natural — it comes from being rooted and grounded in the Word of God.

3. Obey Without Hesitancy

“By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.” – Hebrews 11:8 (NIV)

Some people want all the answers before they obey God.

They want everything to make sense and feel safe before moving forward. They want to know what they’re getting into.

There’s just one problem — that’s not faith!

When God gives an instruction, He rarely gives us the full blueprint of the plan ahead. He expects more.

Think of all the people in the faith hall of fame — Hebrews 11 — who were given instructions that made no sense in the natural.

Noah could have questioned the idea of building a giant ark, using a lot of resources, and risking his reputation, when rain had never before been seen on the earth.

Moses could have abandoned the whole exodus plan when Pharaoh said no time and time again.

The Israelites could have resisted the order to march around Jericho seven times to get victory, when it didn’t make much sense in the natural.

Yet, each of these faith heroes obeyed God without hesitancy — and they all got the victory.

Moving forward without all the answers was the only way they were going to reach their destination — the promises of God.

It may seem safe to sit back and wait to see the full picture, but it can be dangerous both physically and spiritually.

That’s where Corrie ten Boom was when she said, “The center of His will is our only safety.”

When the Lord first called Kenneth Copeland into ministry, He instructed him to attend Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla.

But Kenneth didn’t want to go back to school, and all he could see was the financial distress he and Gloria were facing.

Common sense told him if they couldn’t make a living working six days a week, they certainly couldn’t survive his going to school.

(Common sense will keep you bound to the natural when it’s time to step out in faith.) So, he didn’t obey.

When a pastor friend invited him to lead worship at a church in Houston, he accepted.

But as he and Gloria, along with their two small children, headed back to Fort Worth to pack for the move, they were in a terrible car accident.

Kenneth recalled it this way: “You could have named me Jonah. I fit every symptom of Jonah. I was going in another direction and we had this terrible, horrible car wreck. Now don’t you ever get the idea that God brought that car wreck on us.  No, no.  I brought that car wreck on us.”

Gloria was sick with the flu, and Kellie, just a toddler, was in shock.

John was a 4-month-old baby who suffered a broken arm and four broken ribs.

As Kenneth sat in the hospital with his family, he began repenting and asking God to forgive him for being a Jonah — one who delayed obedience.

As he repented for his disobedience, he felt the power of the Lord come upon him. As it did, healing came into the room.

Baby John finally fell off to sleep, Gloria went to sleep and Kellie went to sleep — all of them peaceful.

Right then, he agreed to obey the Lord and go to Tulsa — not Houston.

There’s safety in obeying God, and stepping out of His will can put you in danger.

When you’re fully persuaded, you won’t hesitate to follow orders.

God is the Master, and when He gives orders, we are to obey them immediately!

That’s the kind of faith that is pleasing to God — to have faith in the One who gives the orders.

That’s why Jesus was so impressed by the faith of the centurion in need of healing for his servant.

Jesus said, “I will come and heal him.”

But the officer said, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come into my home. Just say the word from where you are, and my servant will be healed. I know this because I am under the authority of my superior officers, and I have authority over my soldiers. I only need to say, ‘Go,’ and they go, or ‘Come,’ and they come. And if I say to my slaves, ‘Do this, they do it.” (Matthew 8:7-9)

To live fully persuaded, you need to become a person who understands what it means to be under authority — who knows how to obey orders.

You are not just a child of God — you’re a soldier in the army of the Lord, and your promotion comes from following orders.

That means we can’t go AWOL (absent without leave), and expect to see a manifestation of THE BLESSING in our lives.

Have you gone AWOL?

Did you go AWOL from a church you were called to be in because they didn’t treat you like you wanted them to?

Were you called to be in a certain city, but you didn’t stay or didn’t go?

Are you loving others the way you love yourself, and loving fellow believers as God loves them?

If you haven’t been obedient — repent — and get right back where God told you to be, and quickly!

The centurion was a man under authority, and who had been given authority.

When he said, “Just say the word from where you are, and my servant will be healed,” (Matthew 8:8) his feelings had nothing to do with it!

The same goes for you — your feelings don’t have anything to do with your obedience. When God says it — you just obey!

When you look past your circumstances, take God at His Word, and obey without hesitancy, you will activate fully persuaded faith that brings manifested victory every time!

You don’t have to live in the here and now, with only what makes sense to the world.

You can live a life that supersedes all reason and expectation. You can live in victory!

Kenneth Copeland Ministries' mission is to minister the Word of Faith, by teaching believers who they are in Christ Jesus; taking them from the milk of the Word to the meat, and from religion to reality.

https://blog.kcm.org/activate-fully-persuaded-faith/

 

WHY YOU SHOULD NOT DESPAIR WHEN GOD IS SILENT - If God is silent to us, it does not automatically mean that He is disciplining us - God’s silence is not always linked to sin - do not believe the lie that you are a second-tier, second-rate Christian. In reality, it is possible, even probable, that it means quite the opposite. God has entrusted you with His apparent silence for a greater reason. You must recognize that you are not alone in the stillness - in fact, you are in good company. When you realize that Abraham, Joseph, and many of the great prophets all persevered and were eventually promoted through God’s silence, we remember we are not alone - God’s silence is biblical, personal, common, and not always a bad thing. An errant understanding of God produces an inconsistent spiritual life. Bad theology inculcates incorrect thinking. There is an erroneous understanding within the church that God’s silence equals His chastisement in our life. Chastisement is a word we rarely hear in modern “Churchianity” today. Chastisement is the experience of God’s discipline in our lives. God’s silence and God’s chastisement are very different things, and certainly not synonymous. If God is silent to us, it does not automatically mean that He is disciplining us. Trust is the central issue that needs your focus. Will you trust God to straighten out this mess in your life? Will you trust God to see you through the desert? Will you trust God, even when He says no or wait or not now?

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Why You Should Not Despair When God is Silent

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If God is silent to us, it does not automatically mean that He is disciplining us - God’s silence is not always linked to sin - do not believe the lie that you are a second-tier, second-rate Christian. In reality, it is possible, even probable, that it means quite the opposite. God has entrusted you with His apparent silence for a greater reason. You must recognize that you are not alone in the stillness - in fact, you are in good company. When you realize that Abraham, Joseph, and many of the great prophets all persevered and were eventually promoted through God’s silence, we remember we are not alone

Jeremiah J. Johnston

God’s Silence Is Biblical, Personal, Common, and Not Always a Bad Thing

An errant understanding of God produces an inconsistent spiritual life. Bad theology inculcates incorrect thinking.

There is an erroneous understanding within the church that God’s silence equals His chastisement in our life.

Of course, chastisement is a word we rarely hear in modern “Churchianity” today, but it is found in the Bible.

Chastisement is the experience of God’s discipline in our lives.

 and God’s chastisement are very different things, and certainly not synonymous.

If God is silent to us, it does not automatically mean that He is disciplining us.

Recall the episode in John’s gospel in which Jesus saw a blind man and His own disciples queried, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2).

Jesus’ answer corrected the errant theology of first- century Judaism (and some modern Christianity), “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him” (verse 3).

Jewish families in the first century who suffered with handicaps, birth defects, or special needs were considered outcasts.

I am sure they felt God was distant.

However, as we learn in John 9, God had a greater plan for this particular family to experience the power of God with healing and deliverance.

God’s silence is not always linked to sin.

If you are experiencing the silence of God, do not believe the lie that you are a second-tier, second-rate Christian.

In reality, it is possible, even probable, that it means quite the opposite.

God has entrusted you with His apparent silence for a greater reason.

Trust is the central issue that needs your focus.

Will you trust God to straighten out this mess in your life?

Will you trust God to see you through the desert? Will you trust God, even when He says no or wait or not now?

The Bible is a time machine, a portal to the historical past, providing access to examples of common men and women transcending extremely difficult moments with profound courage and faith.

As we search the Scriptures for answers to the unanswered questions, we must remember the Bible is history, not mythology.

The stories of the Bible exhibit verisimilitude with the reality of the world in which the stories take place.

In Latin veritas (root is ver, meaning “veracity, verifiable”) means genuine or true; similitude means similar or likeness.

Therefore, as historians and biblical scholars, when we say the New Testament exhibits verisimilitude with the first century, we are noting that the contents of the biblical narrative correspond with what we know of the era the document describes.

In other words, the Bible finds its place in the ongoing cut and thrust of history and there is tremendous overlap when one compares the sacred Judeo-Christian manuscripts with other extant documents, inscriptions, and archeological findings from antiquity.

We can have an abundance of confidence that the Bible speaks of real people in real places, with real ceremonial and cultural customs, who are trusting God through the vicissitudes of life.

Accordingly, have you considered that God’s silence is biblical?

It is usually a surprise to the casual reader of the Bible that several of the major Bible characters faced moments of deafening silence from God.

Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are, God

The narrative of Abram and Sarai (later to become Abraham and Sarah) serve as a series of mountain-peak passages in the Old Testament.

In studying the carefully recorded chronology of Abraham’s life in Genesis 12–18, these seven chapters serve as a window into the twenty-five most important years of his family’s life.

We learn that Abram and Sarai experienced nearly twenty-five years of God’s silence.

The first period was ten years (see Genesis 12–16), and the second period was thirteen additional years (see Genesis 17–18).

Even God’s closest friends are not exempt from experiencing God’s silence: “The Scripture was fulfilled that says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness’ — and he was called a friend of God” (James 2:23).

Abram and his family endured not one but two distinct periods of God’s silence.

When we encounter Abram and Sarai in the early pages of God’s story they are quite ordinary.

Even so, against all odds, they are able to exhibit faith in God with reckless abandon.

After all, Abram, along with this family, trusted in this personal God, Yahweh (“I Am”), which means the self-existent One, and relocated to a new region called Canaan.

If you read too quickly through Genesis 11:27–12:4, you will miss the fact that when Abram responded to God’s call on his life, he left behind his heritage, his rightful land, his extended family, and all of his eventual inheritance to follow Yahweh 1,500 miles (2,400 km) from Ur (modern-day Iraq), through Haran (modern-day Syria), to Canaan (modern-day Israel).

At his defense before the Sanhedrin, Stephen said, “Brothers and fathers, hear me. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran, and said to him, ‘Go out from your land and from your kindred and go into the land that I will show you’” (Acts 7:2–3).

Hundreds of miles from their cultural home, Abram and Sarai found themselves in a foreign land, aging and childless.

Not only is God’s silence biblical, it is also personal.

How is that? God’s silence is personal because it can be the agent of our transformation.

In Genesis 12, Abram (“great father”) was a pagan, he was seventy-five years old when God asked him to leave everything he knew to follow Him.

God promised Abram, “I will make of you a great nation” (Genesis 12:2).

For many Christians it is not difficult to identify with the experience of God’s silence.

While it might not be the issue of infertility, you can probably point to a time in your life when you wondered if God had forgotten you.

Imagine you were in Abram or Sarai’s place.

Ten years had passed since God’s promise that your descendants would become a great nation, in Genesis 12:2.

For many years, God had been silent regarding how and when His covenant with you would be fulfilled.

Suddenly, God appears to you (see Genesis 15:1–6) and you find yourself standing outside, gazing at the night sky unobstructed by today’s city glare as the Lord compares your future and immeasurable offspring with the innumerable stars of the sky.

As with many other characters in the Bible, and probably with us today, clarity came only in hindsight for Abram and Sarai.

In the midst of those years of silence, even a man of great faith such as Abram struggled with God’s way and timing.

He even struggled with the lack of God’s presence! He worried. He looked elsewhere for answers.

Abram was looking for answers to his uncertainties, but the Lord wanted him to look up.

God’s dynamic and starry sermon illustration provided a vision for what He planned to do through Abram’s example of trust and obedience.

Yet when God finally spoke, with this promise beautifully illustrated by the stars in the heavens, Abram “believed in the Lord” (Genesis 15:6).

Here we see that even after ten years of God’s silence, and having absolutely nothing to show for it, Abram cast himself on the un-failing chesed (Hebrew word translated most often as “lovingkindness” or “grace”) love of God.

Abram trusted in God’s covenant faithfulness and he decided, against all odds, to trust in God’s character.

Abram affirmed his trust in God’s covenant faithfulness and was declared righteous. His faith (’ā·măn) — which in Hebrew means “to be convinced, have confidence, to trust,” very similar to our English amen — is cited again and again in the New Testament as the doctrine of imputed righteousness. (See, for instance, Romans 4:3, 9, 33; Galatians 3:6; James 2:23.)

Fast-forward to Genesis 17, Abram is now ninety-nine years old (he was seventy-five when God initially promised his progeny), twenty-four years after promising Abram a son, and thirteen years after confirming His covenant.

God changes Abram’s name to Abraham (“father of multitudes”).

Therefore, Abraham’s transformation occurred in the midst of God’s silence, because he had cast himself unreservedly on the character of El Shaddai — God Almighty.

(Genesis 17:1, “When Abram was ninety- nine years old the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, ‘I am God Almighty.’”)

Thankfully the story does not end there. When we study the narratives of the Bible, we must remember that these are not fairy tales.

These characters in the Bible are not super heroes or robots. They were normal people, like you and me.

One of the most relevant and rewarding aspects of studying the Bible is that the central characters and narratives are so approachable.

We can read our stories into the biblical epic as though we were present, watching the scenes as they unfolded, taking hold of timeless principles and examples of faith.

What would your response be to God after twenty-four years of silence?

After sixteen verses of God proclaiming His might and power (see Genesis 17:1–16), Abraham responds in a most human way: he laughed in God’s face.

Abraham’s name has been changed yet his immediate reaction was to laugh at God (see Genesis 17:17–18), which was an expression of disbelief and doubt.

Guess what? God has a sense of humor, too.

God said in Genesis 17:19 that Abraham shall name his son Isaac (“laughter”) so that each time Abraham calls for his son, he will always be reminded that God transcended his momentary doubts and kept His covenant promise.

No wonder God asked a third person a question of Himself: “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” (Genesis 18:14).

Perhaps you have laughed in disbelief at God’s apparent absence in your life.

It may be that you identify with the father in Mark 9, a believer who struggled with a chronically-ill son, who said to Jesus, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24).

In this case, Jesus did not berate the father for his believing unbelief!

Jesus healed his child and we learn a dynamic lesson: some of the most faithful believers struggle with moments of intense doubt as a result of the adversities in life.

Not only is God’s silence real, biblical and personal, it is also common.

Consider Joseph’s experience with the silence of God.

Joseph was obedient to God; he trusted, obeyed, followed, and ended up in a foreign land, Egypt, a teenage victim, sold in a human trafficking transaction (see Genesis 37:1–36) to become a slave in Potiphar’s house.

Joseph was wrongly accused and Potiphar had Joseph thrown in an Egyptian prison. (See Genesis 39:1–23.)

Many overlook the description in Psalm 105:17– 19: “... Joseph, who was sold as a slave. They hurt his feet with shackles; his neck was put in an iron collar. Until the time his prediction came true, the word of the Lord tested him” (HCSB).

Genesis 40 concludes by saying Joseph was forgotten in prison. God’s silence.

The meta-narrative was that God did not want Joseph to remain in the land of Canaan, where his family would have most likely died from famine.

God did not want Joseph as a slave in Potipher’s house, either.

God wanted Joseph to be Pharaoh’s prisoner. Why? Because God wanted to favor him in the eyes of Pharaoh.

God’s silence was a test. Joseph’s trans- formation to becoming the second-most powerful man in Egypt happened through God’s silence.

Therefore, God’s silence can lead to our transformation.

The faithful Old Testament prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel all experienced God’s silence.

God’s silence is biblical, personal, common, and not always a bad thing.

So, here is the key application: when the silence is real in your life you must recognize that you are not alone in the stillness.

In fact, you are in good company.

A right biblical framework will cause you to think rightly about your experiences. What is it about human nature that we constantly doubt ourselves?

When you realize that Abraham, Joseph, and many of the great prophets all persevered and were eventually promoted through God’s silence, we remember we are not alone.

First Peter 4:12–13 says, “Dear friends, don’t be surprised when the fiery ordeal comes among you to test you as if something unusual were happening to you. Instead, rejoice as you share in the sufferings of the Messiah, so that you may also rejoice with great joy at the revelation of His glory” (HCSB).

[Editor’s Note: This excerpt is taken from Unanswered: Lasting Truth for Trending Questions ©2015 Jeremiah J. Johnston.

Dr. Jeremiah J. Johnston is a New Testament scholar, professor, apologist, and speaker. Dr. Johnston completed his doctoral residency in Oxford in partnership with Oxford Centre for Christian Studies and received his Ph. D. from Middlesex University (United Kingdom) with commendation. Dr. Johnston serves as the founder and president of Christian Thinkers Society, a Resident Institute at Houston Baptist University where he also serves as Associate Professor of Early Christianity. For more information, visit www.ChristianThinkers.com.

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