To take possession of your promise, you must endure. You are rewarded only for that which you endure in life.

To endure takes commitment. Commitment is often difficult to maintain for many people…because they don’t want to stand: to remain steadfast under pressure, no matter what the situation is. Matthew 24:13 says: “But he that shall endure into the end, the same shall be saved.”

The prize is not given to those who run fast at the beginning of the race – it is given to those who endure. Reward comes as a result of your endurance.

To endure means “to continue in the same state without perishing, to last, to remain firm, as under suffering, and to suffer patiently.”

The Bible declares in James 1:6-8:

But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord. A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.

The reason we often do not possess that which God has promised us is because we are in, we are out, we are unstable, we are inconsistent – we are “double-minded.” We might believe in God on Monday…but we forfeit the promise by Friday, when we get flaky in our commitment to the Truth.

When I contracted lung disease and my lungs began to operate as low as twenty-eight percent, my situation did not match up to my revelation. I knew God is Jehovah Rapha, the God that heals – and no matter what my situation said, I still believed God is a healer. When the doctors used words like “incurable” and “impossible,” I stood on the Word of God. I spoke to my situation. I called these lungs whole. I pronounced the Word of God, according to Isaiah 55:11:

…it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.

I spoke to my body and I commanded that it be healed by the blood covenant of Jesus Christ, because “he was wounded for our transgression, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). I expected to be healed, although I didn’t need it to prove to me who God is, or all that I have in Christ. I didn’t need proof, because I had the Word.

And that Word worked in my life when doctors gave a negative prognosis. When the doctors said it was impossible, I knew the Word of God was higher than any natural law. I stood firm under pressure…and I endured.

You can also endure. Do not forfeit God’s promise in your life. It takes commitment to see possession. You must believe God and be consistent in that belief.

Although the promise is often packaged with persecution, storms, or challenges, you must make a decision to be committed, consistent, and to stand firm on what God has said. Even when the situation seems contrary to the promise, you must say, “I have decided to follow Jesus”…to stand on his Word, and the promise gained through His sacrifice. With that kind of tenacity, you will see God’s promise fulfilled in your life!