Prayer and Promises

We ought to thank God always for you, brothers and sisters, and rightly so, since your faith is flourishing and the love each one of you has for one another is increasing. Therefore, we ourselves boast about you among God’s churches—about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and afflictions that you are enduring. — 2 Thessalonians 1:3,4, CSB

Faith lightens our burdens and relieves our weariness by the anticipation of Heaven at our journey’s end. Faith rejoices in hope, and is patient in affliction. Faith waxes strong and valiant in conflict, and conquers in the great fight of temptation. We must have a living faith,—a faith that will hold the soul in the hour of trial. 

Faith plants itself on the promises of God, and claims them as surety that he will do just as he said he would. Jesus comes to the sinful, helpless, needy soul, and says, “What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.” Believe; claim the promises, and praise God that you do receive the things you have asked of him. 

A large class of the professed Christian world are watching their feelings; but feeling is an unsafe guide… Satan can move upon our feelings, and he can so arrange surrounding circumstances as to make our feelings changeable. Victory in God is not feeling, but faith. It is the faith that will not yield although there are seeming impossibilities to be encountered. 

We may have daily victories; but we lose the most precious gifts that Heaven can bestow because we will not take God at his word. When I am afflicted, and ask for help, I do not sit in my room and wait for this help to come to me. I go forward in the path of humble obedience, expecting the Lord to answer my prayers, and sustain and bless me in doing the work that duty requires. Although all may seem dark, I place myself in the channel of light. What have I to do with feelings of darkness and discouragement? What have I to be troubled about? Faith can penetrate the darkest cloud. God has promised, and he will not fail me. It is no difficult, mysterious problem to believe. We take Jesus at his word; we come to him with all our burdens and our soul needs, and, according to his promise, find in him a helper and a strong deliverer. 

If we spent all our spare moments in work for the Redeemer, in searching the Scriptures, and in pleading with God to be imbued with his Spirit, what precious victories we should gain for Jesus! 

— Signs of the Times, May 22, 1884 

Through my affliction, O Lord, I take You at Your word and place myself in Your channel of light. Fill me with Your Spirit that I may gain victories through You. I claim Your promise that my faith will flourish through this affliction with praise that You will bless and give me the things I ask for because You promised it. You are my helper and strong deliverer and have never failed me!