If you have ever ordered something and made arrangements for it to be shipped to your house, you definitely are expectant of its arrival. If is doesn’t come within an expected time frame, you would track it to find out what the hold up is. If it still doesn’t come you may even call the company you ordered from to investigate further. You wouldn’t let it go undelivered, you would pursue it until you got it. Why wouldn’t you let it go, why would you pursue it? Probably because you paid for it so you expect that it is yours, it belongs to you and so the responsible party should send to you what belongs to you, right?
What if someone else ordered something for you and had it sent to you? They supplied you with the tracking number so you could keep track of it, gave you all the details of that package so you would for sure get it. Same thing right? You still would expect it because someone paid for it. Maybe it was your mom or dad who sent it. You know they would want you to have it, to expect it right? So if it didn’t come wouldn’t they want you to track it, to investigate where it was? Yes because your mom and dad love you and you know whatever they sent you would be good for you.
All that said, why then don’t we expect our promises from God the same way? Why do we let them go undelivered? They have been paid for, they are good for us, sent in love but still we don’t expect them. If they don’t come in a little while, we let them go undelivered as if God isn’t good for His Word.
I know someone who always said, if I don’t expect anything good I won’t be disappointed— so she never expected anything good. What she didn’t understand is if we are to live by faith for the good things in life that God promises us to be happy, we have to expect. If we don’t expect we have no faith and no faith means we live in the dark, in fear, sickness, lack, and defeat.
God gave me this message this morning. He is encouraging us to expect and know that expecting is faith. If what we are expecting hasn’t arrived, we should track it, find out where it is, what the hold up is. James 1: 5 tells us if we lack wisdom we can ask God for it, that would be tracking the privileged package, the one Jesus paid for.
James 1:5 If any of you is deficient in wisdom, let him ask of the giving God [Who gives] to everyone liberally and ungrudgingly, without reproaching or faultfinding, and it will be given him.
When God gives you the wisdom, when He tells you what the hold up is, then do what He tells you to get that package. It may be a healing package and the wisdom may be that you have to act healed. James 2:17 tells us faith without action is dead.
James 2:17 So also faith, if it does not have works (deeds and actions of obedience to back it up), by itself is destitute of power (inoperative, dead).
I have a friend who was having trouble with her knee. She liked walking and would continue to walk everyday, but with a brace. She was calling those things to be not as though they were as God tells us to do, but nothing was happening. God spoke to her and told her to stop wearing the brace to add action to her faith. She did what God said and she was healed. Her package was delivered.
I had a leg injury and was calling it healed. I chose to expect my healing rather than go to the doctor, rather than to be laid up for eight weeks. I called those things to be not as though they were, meaning I called my leg healed according to Isaiah 53:5 By His stripes I was healed— my promise. When I ask God why I wasn’t healed, He showed me my faith action wasn’t in tact. He told me to stop taking Advil and go to the gym. I did what He said and with in the next two days my leg was healed. My package arrived. I have many other privileged packages that arrived by expecting them. Not letting them slip through my fingers but being expectant of what was paid for, for me.
Isaiah 53:4 Surely He has borne our griefs (sicknesses, weaknesses, and distresses) and carried our sorrows and pains [of punishment], yet we [ignorantly] considered Him stricken, smitten, and afflicted by God [as if with leprosy]. 5 But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our guilt and iniquities; the chastisement [needful to obtain] peace and well-being for us was upon Him, and with the stripes [that wounded] Him we are healed and made whole.
You can do the same thing, you were bought with a great price, your pain, sickness, your distress, your well being has all been paid for! Expect the package!