“Then will all your people be righteous and they will possess the land forever. They are the shoot I have planted, the work of my hands, for the display of my splendor. The least of you will become a thousand, the smallest a mighty nation. I am the Lord; in its time I will do this swiftly”_NIV (Isaiah 60:21-22).

The Lord isn’t slack concerning his promises, yet at the same time, he is in no rush to fulfill a request until it is the appointed time of harvest. All of the details are carefully planned out for answered prayers, and it is up to us to abide in him, and allow those seedlings to take root where the Lord planted them so that they will produce fruit.

The Lord doesn’t deny our petitions when he delays his answer. Rather, he hears us and knows that when the perfected time arrives, we’ll be ready to receive the answer to our prayers. If he arrived any sooner, we may not give God the glory; any later, we may forget to recognize his hand at work in our situation.

Sometimes the steps towards our miracle are not at all the way we anticipated it would be, but we can trust that God has the right time and circumstance for the miracle. He knows the people that need to hear the Truth. He has set us in this place to be a witness. Before we were even born, he knew the steps that we’d need to take in order to get his will accomplished and the answer delivered, but if we really want to reap our full potential in Christ, we must learn to wait on the Lord, get established in the Word, and seek his face.

Faith opens doors in our lives, and without faith it is impossible to please God. If this is true, then many people struggle to live for God, because they don’t believe that their faith will work. Even people who do believe, buckle under the pressure of daily living, instead of bending their knee in prayer asking God to help them to endure. When life gets real, and you see no easy answers; it’s time to wait on God. It may seem that he has turned a deaf ear to your requests, but there are reasons that may not be evident to you for years to come.

Don’t give up on God! Throughout the Bible, men and women have gotten into trouble when they stepped outside of the protection and authority of the Holy Ghost, to pursue their own way.  If it seems that your prayers are never being heard, take heart, Joseph felt the same way for all of the years that he was in Egyptian bondage after being sold into slavery. He may have felt abandoned by God, but he never allowed himself the opportunity to dwell on it. He never let it rob him of his victory. He later understood that God’s plan saved a nation in famine.

“Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience: And patience, experience; and experience, hope:” (Romans 5:1-4).

In this week’s Lattereign we look at what it means to be  Refined through the Fire. We will all go through difficult seasons in our lives, and sometimes we may get discouraged when life happens to us. If we feel out of control, it is easy to want to give up on God, but you must not quit. You are closer to your miracle than you think. The Lord has a plan for your life, and that doesn’t mean that everything that you are going through will be easy. Still, hold on to the Lord and he will give you peace that will pass all understanding.