One of the harder things I have had to learn to do over the years is to completely ignore my circumstances when it comes to praying for others. Whether praying to raise the dead, for those completely unconscious in the ICU, or any other seemingly-impossible situation, it can be a huge challenge to remain steadfast in faith. When everything in our circumstances scream “This is impossible! You will fail!” and especially those times when there is no one else standing in faith with you, those are the times where we truly discover what is inside us.
I have been blessed with good friends who are also not strangers to believing for and seeing Heaven’s interventions into humanly-impossible circumstances, but at the end of the day we can never rely on someone else’s faith, their beliefs, their encouragement, or anything else. The only one we can rely on is God, who never fails us and never leaves us to deal with things without His assistance, regardless of how things sometimes feel exactly that way. What we are given the opportunity to learn in such trying situations is something that Hebrews 6:12 states quite plainly, saying “We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.” Impossible situations require not just faith, but patience.
Did Daniel simply engage faith when it took 21 days of fasting for an angelic messenger to fight his way past a demonic prince to bring a message to Daniel? Or was patience involved? When Jesus told the disciples to wait in the upper room, how did 500 believers dwindle down to 120 in a week’s time? Was it because some of them had faith but no patience?
In any situation we, as a choice of our will, must choose to remain steadfast—stable and steady, not wavering, not turning aside, and even if we do waver, that it only be for moments as we continue forward and onward. When we pray, we understand that we aren’t asking if God wants to intervene, but are seeking Him on how He wants to, and inviting Him to share His plans with us so we can walk it out.
In any situation we can have full assurance that it is the will of God for us to manifest the Kingdom of Heaven on earth because Jesus already purchased the solution. Our job is to walk it out. However, the only way we will successfully do that is if we let patience, steadfastness, and intentional single-focus be formed within us. While Hebrews 6:12 tells us that we must have both faith and patience, it does come with a promise—that as those things become formed and revealed in us, we will most assuredly inherit the promises.
And for those of you who are dealing with really difficult circumstances right now, I want this to be an encouragement to you. Remain steadfast. Ignore your circumstances. Keep pressing forward. God is with you, and He is always faithful.
