"Judging God as Faithful"

In this season, the Lord has been speaking to me regarding His faithfulness to us, and how important it is for our hearts to be positioned to trust God's faithfulness in order to see His promises fulfilled in our lives.

We know that the Lord's promises to us are always outside our own capability in the natural, so we need to access the miraculous power of God in order for the promise of God to be fulfilled in our lives.

The Key Ingredient

Romans 4:16 (AMPC) clearly states that faith is the key ingredient to inheriting the Lord's promise:

"Therefore, [inheriting] the promise is the outcome of faith and depends [entirely] on faith, in order that it might be given as an act of grace (unmerited favor), to make it stable and valid and guaranteed to all his descendants-not only to the devotees and adherents of the Law, but also to those who share the faith of Abraham, who is [thus] the father of us all."

Abraham is a clear example of the Lord delivering a promise that was outside of Abraham's capability to achieve in his own strength. Remember, his wife Sarah was barren, and so the promise of being the father of many nations was, in the natural, IMPOSSIBLE! BUT GOD!

Hebrews 11:11 unlocks a vital ingredient and heart position that Sarah possessed that "empowered" her to see the Lord's promise fulfilled.

Hebrews 11:11 (AMPC), "Because of faith also Sarah herself received physical power to conceive a child, even when she was long past the age for it, because she considered [God] Who had given her the promise to be reliable and trustworthy and true to His word."

Hebrews 11:11 (NKJV), "By faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged Him faithful who had promised."

WOW! Sarah received the miraculous power of God to see His promise fulfilled in her life, because she considered and judged God as faithful – not because she was perfect and such a "good Believer" and did everything right. No! If you remember, she actually laughed at the Lord for saying that she would give birth in her old age, and then lied about it (Genesis 18:10-15)!

But here in Hebrews 11:11, we see a key that unlocked the impossible. It was her willingness to judge God as faithful. "What does that look like?" you might ask. Well, let's unpack this for a moment.

To pass judgment on someone or something is to conclude, to deem (to find), to regard as and to bring a final verdict.

Sarah regarded, concluded, and her final verdict on God was that He is faithful to His promises. Her faith actually rested on His character that He is not a man that He should lie.

Faithful means, "reliable, trusted, dependable, steadfast in allegiance or affection, firm in adherence to promise or adherence to duty."

2 Timothy 2:13, "If we are faithless [do not believe and are untrue to Him], He remains true (faithful to His Word and His righteous character), for He cannot deny Himself."

According to Strong's Concordance, the word "deny" means "contradict, abnegate, refuse, reject, disavow." A denial of something is a refusal of something that is not true OR a statement that something is not true and does not exist.

Positioned to Receive

Just because we struggle to believe what He has said, doesn't mean He is going to agree with our doubts and unbelief that He is not true. He must remain true to Himself. He cannot contradict Himself nor renounce Himself. He maintains allegiance to what He has spoken over our lives, but our heart position does matter. We don't fulfill what God has said but we need to be positioned to "RECEIVE" what God has said. This is what Sarah did. She positioned herself to receive the impossible by judging God as faithful.

In actual fact, Sarah judged God as someone who told the truth. Her receiving the promise had nothing to do with how perfect her process of faith was. If that were the case, then it would give grounds for boasting, and Paul says in Romans 3 that the walk of faith cancels out the ability for boasting. No, it was simply the fact that she trusted in the character of God, that He was not a man that He should lie.

Numbers 23:19, "God is not man, that He should lie, or a son of man, that He should change His mind. Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not fulfill it?"

God is not a man, He is not a human. We change our minds and we can be unstable. We are up and down and all over the place. We can say we will commit to something, then later on down the track say, "I don't want to do this anymore," but God is faithful to fulfill what He said He would do.

The Promise

Let's take a quick moment to just clarify what a promise actually is. A promise is "a declaration or assurance that one will do something or that a particular thing will happen." It is a covenant, an oath or a vow.

Deuteronomy 7:9, "Know, recognize, and understand therefore that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love and mercy with those who love Him and keep His commandments, to a thousand generations."

In this Scripture we see faithfulness linked with keeping covenant, or, in other words, fulfilling promises. He is a God who when He says He is going to do something, He will do it. The enemy wants to attack your belief in the faithfulness of God. He comes to tell you it's not working, you aren't hearing, you missed it, etc.

The time between the promise, when God first announced it over you, and the fulfillment of it coming to pass, may seem like a lifetime. It may seem like you have missed it or it's too late now, but the Lord would want to encourage you in the story of Sarah. Yes, there were many years that went by, but God still fulfilled what He said He would do.

Protecting Our Judgment Filter

We need to protect our judgment filter. What do I mean by that? Our judgment can be under fire. How we see God, how we consider God, can be under fire when we get weary in the waiting.

We have to guard our judgments. Sometimes we can doubt God and God is like, "You are questioning My character." Think about it. When someone is put before a judge, they are put on trial. Evidence is brought to convict guilty or innocent. Every time we doubt Him we are actually requiring Him to put forth more evidence to prove Himself.

What is our VERDICT toward God? What is our judgment of Him? When we doubt what He has said, we are putting Him under trial. When we put someone on trial, what they have to do is present evidence to prove their innocence. So when we put the Lord on trial, we are continuing to want evidence from Him to prove Himself. The Lord has already been proven (Psalm 18:30). The thing is, it is our faith that is being tested. Faith is the evidence of the unseen realm (Hebrews 11:1). That's why it pleases God. That's why the 10 spies in Numbers 13 couldn't please God, because they looked at the giants rather than the promise.

What Are You Looking At?

The Lord would say to you, "What are you looking at? Are you enemy focused or promise focused?" Promise-focused people make it to their inheritance. Enemy-focused people perish in the wilderness.

Matthew 16:4, "A wicked and morally unfaithful generation craves a sign, but no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. Then He left them and went away."

The Pharisees wanted the Lord to prove Himself – prove His authority, prove that He was who He said He was. And He said, "Why does this generation ask for a sign?" Because pure faith comes from innocence and purity of heart. Jesus later said in Matthew 16:6, "...Watch out; beware of the leaven of the Pharisees..." This simply means the teaching of the Pharisees and the heart from which they operate. Which is sense and reason rooted in pride.

This is why Jesus said we must have faith like a child (Matthew 18:3). We go through trials and tests to purify our faith. Our hearts are tested to believe God. Faith doesn't operate in contamination. When we are feeding on the mixture of this world, it hinders faith.

Hold Fast Without Wavering

Abraham never wavered (Romans 4:20). The Greek word for wavered in this passage, actually means "to withdraw from, to separate from, or to strive with dispute." We see Abraham didn't walk a perfect process, as he tried to fulfill God's promise in his own strength by having Ishmael through his maidservant Hagar. But he didn't walk away from the promise. He held fast to it and didn't give up. Sometimes that is the only thing we are required to do – not give up. Don't get caught up with the HOW, that's God's job; your job is to judge God as faithful.

James 2:20 explains to us that faith is action. Sometimes that action of faith is deeming, perceiving and acknowledging the Lord as faithful. This was the faith-action Sarah took, which enabled her to conceive against the natural circumstances of her physical bareness.

Hebrews 10:23, "Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful."

In the Greek, "hold fast" means "to lay hold of, keep, retain, take, withhold, possess."

Our job is to hold down our faith and confession – to own it – not let it fly away and out of our grasp. Our job is to keep it in memory, to rehearse our rhema. That enables us to be like Abraham and not waver, give up or divorce ourselves from the promise.

He will fulfill that which He promised. His end of the deal is to fulfill. Our end of the deal is to hold fast and retain and maintain the judgment of His character as true and faithful.

This is how Sarah's miraculous promise was fulfilled. Her action that completed her faith was considering God faithful. The final verdict in her heart regarding the Lord was that He wasn't a liar. We have to come back and put our trust in who He is! Let our final verdict and conclusion be that He is faithful.

Anita Alexander
Revival Flame Ministries
Email: anita@revival-flame.org
Website: www.revival-flame.org

Motivated by an intense love for the Body of Christ, Anita Alexander's passion and compassion is to see the Church forsake religion and tradition, awaken to the Father's love, and arise and walk in the overcoming identity as sons and daughters of the Kingdom. Anita and her husband Dr. Sasha Alexander travel nationally and internationally ministering in revival fire that brings resurrection life, healing and awakening to the Body of Christ. Together, their passion is to impart, raise up and release a generation of sons and daughters who manifest the glorious victory of the finished work of the Cross. They are co-founders and senior ministers of Revival Flame Ministries, Golden City Church, and Kingdom Academy School of the Spirit Ministry Training School in Gold Coast, Australia.

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