Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

(Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

“That ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.” (Hebrews 6:12).

When we study and meditate upon God’s word, we see that the Lord has given us many promises. These promises are already ours in the spiritual realm. But, in order to receive the physical manifestation of these promises, we need to have faith and patience.

The Bible defines faith as “the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.” The substance, faith, concerns the spiritual reality of what we need or desire. The spiritual world is the parent of the physical world. Things exist in the spirit before they are manifested in the physical. So, to have faith is to believe that what we are asking God for is a “present” spiritual reality. Faith also requires “hope.” This is not a wish, it is a burning expectation, or a knowing, that what we are praying for is already ours. Our burning desire, hope, gives form to our faith.

Patience can be either passive or active in nature. If a person has a passive patience, they are simply waiting. A picture of this would be of a person patiently waiting for an important package to arrive in the mail. However, to be actively patient means to “steadily” do something without giving up. A person trying to knock down a 6 foot brick wall with a small hammer would be a picture of active patience. This person keeps chipping away, day after day, until the wall is gone.

Hebrews 6:12 concerns both types of patience, but it mainly speaks of an active patience. It is consistently confessing what God’s word says day after day. It is believing that you already have what you are asking God for and speaking according to that belief.

What we do not want to do is to simply wait for God to move. The only exception to this is if the Holy Spirit has instructed us to do so. But many times God has moved, and he is waiting on us to use “faith and patience” to obtain what he has provided.

Find God’s promises to you in his word. Then meditate upon them to build the spiritual reality of those promises inside of you. Pray and ask God for wisdom concerning his word. And finally, begin to speak those promises into physical existence.