Gestating A Promise

He has sent us a mighty Savior from the royal line of his servant David, just as he promised through his holy prophets long ago.

Luke 1:69-70

These lines are from the praise song of Zechariah as he rejoiced in the miraculous birth of his and Elizabeth’s son, John, known later as John the Baptist. John was the forerunner of the promised Savior, the Messiah.

Zechariah’s song reminds us that the promise that was about to be revealed in the person of Jesus had been spoken long ago. For generations, God’s people had clung to the promise of a Messiah, in spite of circumstances and events that seemed to belie the truth of God’s Word. God renewed the promise through his prophets generation after generation, awakening and sustaining hope and expectation and faith.

Mary was pregnant with the Savior; God’s people were pregnant with his promise. It gestated in their hearts over generations, through wars and famine and victories and defeats and times of slavery and times of freedom and prosperity. And then, the due date arrived. The Promised One was born of a virgin, and the fulfillment of God’s promise was revealed on the earth. Hope deferred was now fulfilled. God had proven his words true and had proven himself true to his words.

God never leaves us out of his story. He pulls us into the action by requiring faith in something not yet seen, something impossible. He encourages and upholds us as we walk that part of the journey, during which the promise gestates and what he has promised seems not to come. Time passes, and faith almost faints. Then, in the fullness of time, what he has spoken he performs.

Are you journeying through a gestating promise right now? Yield to the process. Let the promise do its work in you. Wait patiently for the fullness of time.

Jesus, you are the proof that God’s promises are sure. When it looks to me as if you are neglecting your promises, let my heart see you, the Promise, lying incongruously on a bed of hay, transforming the ordinary into the holy. My soul waits for the fullness of time.

Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God, whose ways you may not understand at the time.

Oswald Chambers(1874–1917), Scottish minister and teacher