The Bible is filled with promises God made to us. He’s completely faithful, and whatever He has spoken has been made available to us because of the finished works of Jesus. However, simply reading them doesn’t make them come to pass in our lives. Our part is to believe them, speak them, meditate on them, and accept them even when we don’t see them yet; this transfers what’s already done from the spiritual to the physical realm.
Believers Must Put their Faith into Action
We all want to walk in abundance; the key to being able to do this is knowing how to pursue the promise. Just because we discover that there are wonderful privileges and promises in the Word doesn’t necessarily cause them to show up. We have to know how to go after them with our faith. For God’s will to be fulfilled in our lives, we need to learn what steps to take to pull the promise from the unseen into the tangible.
The problem for most Christians is that we read the promises of God and just passively sit there hoping and praying that He might honor us with some of them. There’s a great deal of uncertainty as to how to proceed. Nothing happens in the kingdom of God without faith; making sure our faith is active and not passive causes things to happen.
David Acted on His Faith
We see a strong example of faith in David. When the Amalekites attacked, David was devastated but didn’t give up. The situation initially seemed hopeless. The people blamed him for what happened and wanted to stone him, but he went to God to ask how to proceed. “And it came to pass, when David and his men were come to Ziklag on the third day, that the Amalekites had invaded the south, and Ziklag, and smitten Ziklag, and burned it with fire; And had taken the women captives, that were therein: they slew not any, either great or small, but carried them away, and went on their way. So David and his men came to the city, and, behold, it was burned with fire; and their wives, and their sons, and their daughters, were taken captives. Then David and the people that were with him lifted up their voice and wept, until they had no more power to weep. And David’s two wives were taken captives, Ahinoam the Jezreelitess, and Abigail the wife of Nabal the Carmelite. And David was greatly distressed; for the people spake of stoning him, because the soul of all the people was grieved, every man for his sons and for his daughters: but David encouraged himself in the Lord his God. And David said to Abiathar the priest, Ahimelech’s son, I pray thee, bring me hither the ephod. And Abiathar brought thither the ephod to David. And David enquired at the Lord, saying, Shall I pursue after this troop? shall I overtake them? And he answered him, Pursue: for thou shalt surely overtake them, and without fail recover all” (1 Samuel 30:1-8).
The end of the matter was far better than the beginning. David pursued the Amalekites, recovered the prisoners, and won a great victory. The point is that had David not pursued them, he never would have overtaken them and won the fight. Our issue is that we expect things in the Bible to happen for us, but we fail to pursue them.
We Must Know God’s Promises
There are so many promises contained in God’s Word that without targeting 
the specific promise we need to focus on, we can get scattered. This requires that we study the Bible to find the precise Scripture to apply to our situation. The Word is like a seed. “The sower soweth the word” (Mark 4:14). Farmers who have seed in their barns will never see the harvest unless they sow that seed; neither should a Christian expect results without sowing the seed.
God’s Word has already gone out. He has already said what He needed to say; it has been established and it’s irrevocable. “For ever, O Lord thy word is settled in heaven” (Psalm 119:89). It stands as firm as the heavens and it’s a settled thing; we therefore must make sure it gets settled with us. We settle it in our minds when we realize that what God declared is permanent and that He’ll never renege on His promises. “My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips” (Psalm 89:34).
This works for whatever we’re believing for, whether it’s healing, deliverance, abundance, or anything else we need. After locating the Scripture that pertains to our situation, we believe it. The sign of genuine belief is rest, with no worries or anxieties. There will be external environmental pressures to get us to doubt what was promised; resisting them keeps us in that place of rest.
Our Faith is the Deciding Factor
Everything about us as Christians is based on whether or not we believe. What God said should be the final authority in our lives. Standing on His promises doesn’t involve debate or attempts to rationalize; we’re believers, not debaters. Jesus had to explain this to the man who brought his demon-possessed son to Him for healing. “Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth” (Mark 9:23).
God’s Word is simple and straightforward. If He says we can do a thing, we can; if He says we’re a certain way, we’re that way. This is so, no matter how severely the world tests us on this. Neither do we need to complicate the matter for ourselves through intellectualism or trying to be theoretical.
Doubt is an enemy to our manifestation. If we want to live a life of abundance, we must believe that this is God’s will for us. Agreeing with what He said, speaking it in faith, and then acting on it unleashes supernatural power. Unlike the empty promises the world makes to us, we can stand on God’s promises with absolute certainty because everything is already finished.
