Pull Your Ship In – Part 2

Looking back over decades of my life, I received numerous prophecies that truly seemed to have credibility. Some were predictive of what would happen in the future. I confess that my tendency was to passively wait on God alone to do what was prophesied. I sat in faith, waiting for the prophecy ship to come in. In retrospect, too often the prophecies did not find fulfillment because what I was doing would fall short, whether through character flaws or lack of participating with God day by day.

Too often I wasted time and opportunity by waiting, and waiting, and waiting on God. That is, I waited for God to do something instead of participating with him in the fulfillment of a prophetic word or a Bible verse or a situation leading me. It’s another way of saying I waited for my ship to come in rather than pull in. How much more could’ve happened if I had joined in God’s design and with God pulled my ship in day by day.

Create your opportunity with God. Don’t sit and wait for it. Do it with the commitment that you’re in God’s hands. Work with God for it. That is what the biblical figures did.

Give things a chance to succeed or fail. Ask and trust God to bless what’s his will to bless and withhold blessings from what is not. Then—without jumping to conclusions or giving up on something too quickly just because it’s hard (the devil will hinder, and God will test)—take time to let things play out in your life. Then let go of what God is not blessing, and do what you see God blessing.

Remember 2 Chronicles 20:15–16. Verse 15 finishes with “the battle is not yours, but God’s.” Yea! God’s going to win the battle for me! That’s correct. But what immediately follows in verse 16? “Tomorrow march down against them.” That is, get into the game, the battle, the situation you face. Be involved in every way necessary. God will not win your battle until you first march. Follow the story through verse 23, and you’ll see how God makes the people risk their lives in a huge step of faith—with no apparent presence of God anywhere—before he brings his response and the resulting victory.

Art credit: Gerd Altmann | Pixaby