Abraham looked up and scanned the heavens. As a million stars twinkled, he thought, “How can it be?”. Childless Abraham was given a promise—his descendants would be as numerous as the stars. But then came the test: offer up Isaac, and incredibly, he did. “By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac…” Hebrews 11:17.  God didn’t explain or reassure. He watched. Because sometimes silence is not absence—it’s examination. The teacher doesn’t speak during the test.

Usually, the promise from God comes via a process and a test. We love the idea of increase, but we often resist the path that leads there. Yet there is no glory without a story, or a crown without a cross. Tests are not meant to hurt us—they’re designed to reveal us. They expose what we believe, what we fear, and what we’re willing to surrender. And if God seems silent in the test, it is not rejection—it’s refinement. It is not because He’s distant, but because He’s developing something deeper in us. We want to skip the process, but the process is what makes us like Jesus.  Our Father who loved, called and tested Abraham is developing us too.

Friend, don’t stumble in the silence. And when the Father speaks, you’ll find that you’ve grown closer and stronger and more ready for the promise than you ever imagined. Keep walking. Keep trusting and keep surrendering, and you will find that He has a resurrection of the promise and a supernatural provision for you.

The lamp glowed in the dark, and in the distance, Paul could hear sounds of shouting somewhere in the soldiers’ barracks, but then Paul heard the voice of God. “…You must also bear witness at Rome” Acts 23:11l” Paul had a word from God, and he was soon confined on a Roman ship sailing for Italy. He wasn’t free to move. He wasn’t in control. And yet, he was still in purpose. The prison ship wasn’t a detour. It was the vehicle to his destiny. The journey would include a violent storm, a shipwreck, and even a snake bite. But none of it meant the promise had failed. God often gives us the destination but not the details. He tells us where we’re going, but not what we’ll face on the way.

Like Paul, we may find ourselves in seasons of confinement or surrounded by difficulty, unsure of how the promise will unfold. But confinement doesn’t cancel your calling as a child of God. Storms don’t sink destiny. And silence doesn’t mean God has left. Sometimes the very thing we want to escape is the thing God is using to shape us. The prison ship teaches us that God is not just the God of the promise—He’s the God of the process.

Friend, Our Father is present in the storm and sovereign in the silence. What appears to be a setback may be the setup for your next success.   Trust the One who called you, because if He started it, He will finish it.

We love the story of the prodigal son because we too were welcomed back with a robe and a ring. But sometimes we don’t feel like He is celebrating us each day" We know Jesus said He would be with us and that God’s unmerited favour is upon all His children, but we don’t feel it.

Once when I felt like this, I discovered the problem was in my imagination and not with God. Our imagination creates our feelings and affects our behaviour. The Bible says, "As a man thinks in his heart so is he."  The imagination creates its own reality, and even if something is not true it can still affect you. If you think you are a grasshopper in the face of giants and therefore can’t enter the Promised Land, you will be right.  Or even if God is favouring you but you don’t think He is, you will live in fear and insecurity- a crippled and stilted life. Our wrong thinking doesn’t change the fact that God is with us, but it changes our ability to feel it and enjoy our Father. But if we imagine the truth; that He is in us and walks with us and has His loving arms about us all day, we are confident and enjoy beautiful fellowship with Him.

God gave us our imagination to be a meeting place with Him, so the enemy of our soul tries to fill it with memories of inadequate fathers, wrong images, or seeing our lives as small and inconsequential.  In the end, the One who gave us the imagination as a sanctuary in which to meet God and walk together with Him, is squeezed out of His meeting place.

Friend, reclaim your imagination and fill it with true thoughts of our Father’s presence and favour toward you. Close your eyes and imagine Father favouring you, loving you, coming to you, embracing you and helping you.  For that is all true; anything else is a lie - imagine the truth and let faith arise.

David was to lead a nation. He was a man with passion and a promise, but there was little in his circumstances, that looked like he was being positioned for kingship. But God achieves His purposes, in ways that a man would not think.  God doesn’t develop a person’s reputation but their character so that their life is consistent with the message they are to carry. Our ability to represent Father in the world is determined by the degree that the message or the Word has become flesh in us. 

David’s overarching conviction was that God was his Shepherd and was leading him in life.  David knew that contradictions and opposition, couldn't decide his destiny.  David may not have understood everything, but he believed God would accomplish His plans in spite of everything. Through hardship, enemies, trouble and dishonour, God was working out His plan to make David more than a king. A timeless message of worship, honour and trust in God, to reach countless generations.

Friend, if we love God, he is ordering all the steps required to forge His message in us too. Don't look at other people and wish you had their steps, or envy their “blessed life” Your steps may be enjoyable or not, understood or not but the message God is forming in you, is perfect to touch all the people that He plans to reach through you. He is writing your story for His glory and people’s blessing, including you and yours!

Jesus was born from heaven but lived in Nazareth.  He was born royal yet birthed in a manger.  It is not where you live that makes you royal, but it is who your Father is. Good things can come out of Nazareth, and from where you live too!

Hebrews 2.10 says that God is bringing many sons to glory.  That is, He is bringing you and me into His full intention for us! We are not divine but the Person within us, is. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. God so loves the world, that He continues to give sons and daughters.

“Seeing” our sonship should affect the way we live.  and until we know it in our hearts, we will live below our dignity and our destiny.  Some behaviour is beneath those that are birthed from above. When the prodigal son remembered who he was, it changed the way he lived.  His condition was changed only after he remembered his position as a son.

Friend, you have been born into the world and into your city, from above. The sons are back in town!  Don’t live beneath your status or your purpose. You are royal, you are secure and you are filled with power to give away. There are people all around you who need you to live as a son and daughter.

As Elijah sat in the cave amongst the mess of his life, he couldn’t see God in his circumstances. God wasn't doing what Elijah thought He would do.  His cave was not just a geological place but a spiritual and mental place God never planned for him to be in. Elijah didn’t think that God saw him as valuable. He had even asked God to end his life. He had gone into a cave but God would not leave him there. " And there he went into a cave, and spent the night in that place; and behold, the word of the LORD came to him, and He said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 

The great honour of God speaking was lost on Elijah and he blurts out his depression, paranoia, and hopelessness. “I have been very zealous for the LORD God of hosts; for the children of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars, and killed Your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they seek to take my life.”  (1 Kings 19:8). The prophet Elijah felt ineffective and a failure. Sometimes we get our sense of worth from the perceived value of our effectiveness and circumstances. We are tempted to derive our worth from our busyness or profile in the body of Christ, but we are valuable to God because we are His special creation.  When we realise that we were created on purpose for a purpose, we can be assured that every situation we are in, is crafted by Him or will be used by Him, even if others have made it hard for us. 

Friend, you are of great value to our Father, and both your and your circumstances are part of God’s workmanship. Don’t equate your value with your circumstances. Jesus’ life was strewn with difficulties and trouble, yet he was loved intensely by His Father. So are you, and every trouble Jesus endured brought him a step closer to the crown and the joy that was set before Him. God brought Elijah and Jesus out of their cave into their purpose and He will do the same for you. Listen is He calling you to come out?

Shafts of light fell through the small hole in the wall of the prison and John shifted his position on the floor to be in the sun. It felt good and, in his heart, he worshiped his King. Suddenly he was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day.   “I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet, Saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last:” Rev 1:10  

Being in the Spirit brought supernatural change to what John saw and heard.  John was imprisoned on Patmos Island, but God took him into the Spirit and showed him how things truly were. Things he could not see with his natural eyes.  He saw Gods victory even though his circumstances were confining.  He could see that while he is limited, God works without limitation. Though John was isolated, he saw Jesus in the midst of the church. He saw Jesus moving even when his situation looked static.

In the Spirit, you can see that God is working everything together for good for those that love God.  It means to be able to see or hear what Father is saying in your situation or in spite of your situation.  We can be going through a loss and still see that God is adding something to your life; Have a really bad day but still see the blessing of God and good coming our way.  He was in prison but in the Spirit on the Lords Day. In the Spirit, it's always the Lords Day!

Friend, go into the Spirit today. Jesus is speaking to you there. See that God rules in your life, not your “prison guard or your prison walls”.  See the King sovereign and unshaken in His purpose. Being in the Spirit always trumps being in the prison.

The disciples were sitting on the floor for the meal, when Jesus stood up and took the towel to wash their feet. The feet of travelers were normally dirty from walking on roads littered with dung, left behind by passing flocks of sheep and other animals. At meals people would recline on the floor around the food, their feet not far from the other guest’s noses. I can imagine trying to fellowship with Jesus and the brothers, but all you can think about is your bad smelling feet near your closest table guest. You hope nobody notices but you are a little embarrassed.

The disciple’s feet may have been washed already, but either way Jesus is making a point. I am washing your feet, so you can forget about where you have been and enjoy where you are. I’m washing away the effects and any shame you feel abut your past walk. I want you to be Son conscious not sin conscious. While you are conscious of the past, you’re not able to hear what I’m saying to you now.

Friend, our acceptance with God is not based upon our performance but His, and our fellowship is entirely the result of what He has done, not what we have done. Why not turn our eyes upon Jesus and let everything we are and everything we aren’t, grow dim in the light of His wonderful face.