Every Promise is Yes and Amen in Him. Happy New Year!

“And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of Heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.” – Jesus.

I remember asking God what he meant by this. It had interested me because I knew that Jesus wasn’t saying to get violent with men. He must have meant something by it, but I just did not understand it at the time.

While I was still pondering this my friend on my ship (I was still in the U.S. Navy at the time) was informing me how the Navy promised him a bunch of stuff. That one of the reasons why he joined the Navy was because they would pay his student loans. After he joined, when he submitted the paperwork to get his student loan paid off, he realized that it was not going to be a simple task to get what was his.

He had to fight just to get the benefits that were rightfully his through the contract with the Navy. The reason behind the fight was submitting proper documents. When he would submit them the people working on his documents would take a long time to review it. Then after a couple months they would decline his payment, resend him the documents, and tell him how there was a mistake in his submission. He would then have to resubmit the documents again. Well this happened over and over again until finally he must’ve exhausted the “wicked judges” and they surrendered to his request. They gave him that which was rightfully his.

Then God spoke to me “to them He gave the right to become Sons of God.” And it dawned on me that this is how the violent take it by force! It is God’s will to give you the kingdom, but we wrestle with spiritual principalities that try to discourage us and keep us from the promises.

In Luke 18:1-8 Jesus begins to teach his disciples about how they should pray and never give up by telling them a story and saying, “There was a judge in a certain city who neither feared God nor cared about people. A widow of that city came to him repeatedly, saying, ‘Give me justice in this dispute with my enemy.’ The judge ignored her for a while, but finally he said to himself, ‘I don’t fear God or care about people, but this woman is driving me crazy. I’m going to see that she gets justice, because she is wearing me out with her constant requests!’” Then the Lord said, “Learn a lesson from this unjust judge. Even he rendered a just decision in the end. So don’t you think God will surely give justice to his chosen people who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will grant justice to them quickly! But when the Son of Man returns, how many will he find on the earth who have faith?”

This is the way we take the kingdom, by being steadfast in prayer and believing. “God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: has he said, and shall he not do it? or has he spoken, and shall he not make it good?” (Numbers 23:19). We must trust in the promises, because “all the promises of God in him are yes, and in him Amen” (from 2Cor. 1:20).

Be encouraged, our Father is for us. He does not give a promise without fully intending to fulfill it. So be steadfast in God’s promises over your life because He gladly wants to give it to you. “Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). Happy New Year may God’s promises consume your lives!