I heard a thought-provoking sermon by Kris Vallotton recently regarding God’s promises and miracles.
“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.” Proverbs 13:12
He argues the reason that desire fulfilled is a tree of life is because the promise comes in the form of a seed–one which must grow into a tree. I think this is a beautiful way of looking at God’s promise for healing.
Consider this fact in light of what Jesus says in Matthew 6. “Take no thought for tomorrow,” He says. Why?
…A seed must be watered one day at a time.
…It must drink in the sunlight one day at a time.
…Bark must develop on the sapling one day at a time.
…It must reach toward heaven one day at a time.
We know that 25 years passed between the time God made the initial covenant with Abraham and the time he received his son Isaac. Saying God would withhold an answer to a promise for Abraham for 25 years could make God seem cruel. It’s all in how you frame it, though. Saying that a tree would take 25 years to grow and mature does not seem out of the ordinary at all.
My story is not too dissimilar. I began to struggle with intermittent chronic pain symptoms in 2006. In 2008, the Lord told me I was healed. Did I feel any better at that point? No; as a matter fact, things got much worse in the coming years. What I believe God gave me wasn’t necessarily a full grown tree of healing, but a seed.
A healing seed has 100% of the DNA that a full-grown healing tree has. All it needs is time and resources.
You are not responsible to know the time; you are only responsible to provide the sapling of healing an environment in which it can grow.
… The soil is your inner conviction of God’s goodness toward you
… The water is the faith-infused words and prayers you speak, along with those of encouraging people around you
… The sunlight is the hope you maintain in your heart, for hope is the atmosphere in which faith is generated
Click here to get a little more sunlight today from Bethel Redding’s testimonies.
Different kinds of trees take different amounts of time to mature and bear fruit. A citrus tree only takes a year or two to begin bearing fruit, but a pear tree will take 4 to 6 years. An almond tree takes 2 to 4 years to begin to produce, but a pecan tree grown from a seedling can take over a decade! The wonderfully unexpected thing about your healing tree is that you have no idea how long it may take to mature. It may be one day or one year. Yours might be 13 years like Joseph or 25 years like Abraham. Given enough time, who knows what God can do? In the featured image, I am holding on my finger the oatmeal grain-sized seed that produced the 2000-year-old Californian giant sequoia in the background.
You may not know the length of time between you and the fullness of your miracle, but you can know that every prayer you pray, every time you choose faith, you are a little bit closer than you were the moment before.
Have you watered your promise seed today? 