How's the test-imony going?

Last week, I was thinking about how it sometimes feels like things are never going to change. Notice how I said "feels like." In reality, things do change, and God keeps His promises and God is good no matter what. If you have terminal cancer or your child was killed, God is still good. God has something for people going through the worst of times. Jesus said, "blessed are the poor in spirit" and "blessed are those who mourn." He says that the kingdom of the heavens will break in for the poor and the mournful will be comforted. You can take Jesus' words to the bank. Some people like to talk about "getting a break-through." I have come to the conclusion that, more than you or I getting a break-through, God wants to break-in to our circumstances. That's the message that Jesus came preaching and entrusts us with. God wants to come and take over.

I was reflecting on how God keeps his promises, and you can count on God. My red NASB Bible, given to me in the 1970's, had the promise "The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever," (Isaiah 40:8) written on one of the first pages. You can count on God's word. Then I was thinking about Abraham. He had a promise from God that seemed to take forever to be fulfilled. But we know it was fulfilled. We can look at his and Sarah's lives to learn something about how to live in the in-between time of promise and fulfillment.

David Wilkerson wrote about this topic:

"Being not weak in faith, (Abraham) considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah’s womb” (Romans 4:19).
The essence of true faith is found in this single verse. God had just promised Abraham he would have a son, one who would become the seed of many nations. Remarkably, Abraham didn’t flinch at this promise, even though he was well past the age of siring children. Instead, when Abraham received this word from the Lord, we’re told he “considered not his own body now dead (nor)…the deadness of Sarah’s womb.”
To the natural mind, it was impossible for this promise to be fulfilled. But Abraham didn’t dwell on any such impossibility. According to Paul, the patriarch gave no thought to how God would keep his promise. He didn’t reason with God, “But, Lord, I have no seed to plant. And Sarah has no life in her womb to conceive. My wife is past the ability to bear children. So, how will you do it, Lord?” Instead of entertaining such questions, Abraham simply “considered not.”
The fact is, when God is at work producing a faith that is tried and better than gold, he first puts a sentence of death on all human resources. He closes the door to all human reasoning, bypassing every means of a rational deliverance.
The faith that pleases God is born in a place of deadness. I’m speaking here of the deadness of all human possibilities. It is a place where man-made plans flourish at first and then die. It is a place where human hopes bring temporary relief but soon crash, adding to a sense of helplessness.
Have you been at this place of deadness? Has it seemed you have no options left? You can’t call someone to advise you. The heavens are like brass when you pray, your requests falling to the ground.
I declare to you, this is God at work. His Spirit is working to get you to stop considering the impossibilities—to stop looking to human ways and means—to stop trying to think your way out of your situation. The Holy Ghost is urging you, “Quit hunting for help from some man. And quit focusing on how hopeless you think your situation is. Those are hindrances to your faith.”

Embrace the fellowship of Christ's sufferings (Phil. 3:10). Remember that Jesus, who put his trust in God and was tempted in every way but did not sin, also was a man of sorrows and was acquainted with grief (Isaiah 53:3). We struggle against things and live in anger and fear when that is not the way of God. Sorrow and grief are healthy. The highest form of worship is lament.