SELDI Podcast with Tony Williams

Staying Alert in Blessing: Patience, Perseverance, Practice

• Tony Williams

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Staying Alert in Blessing: Patience, Perseverance, Practice

Discover the power of the three Ps—patience, perseverance, and practice. These principles not only anchor our confidence in God's promises but also serve as a reliable framework to nurture your spirit,  guard the mind, steady the heart, and keep you moving forward, whether life is going well or you are expectantly waiting for a breakthrough. 

• blessing and vigilance in prosperous seasons
• resisting mental sabotage and staying focused
• patience as alignment with God's timing
• perseverance when results are delayed 
• daily practice of worship and Scripture
• ordering spirit, soul, and body for strength
• recalling past faithfulness to build confidence
• meditating, proclaiming, and visualizing promises
• confidence rewarded after endurance

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SPEAKER_00:

Greetings, my friends, Tony Williams here. God loves us unconditionally. God helps us to set goals, and God empowers us through his Holy Spirit and promises from his word to empower us to accomplish everything that he's called and given us the desire to do. What happens when we start to achieve the goals that God has helped us to set? Those peaks, those elevated heights where God just seems to be pouring out his blessings, and he is right now wherever you are, all around the world. However, when these blessings are being poured out upon us by God, he reminds us to always remember that we have an adversary, the devil. And he tells us to be alert. Even when everything is going well, in the midst of our prosperity, God says, be alert, because your adversary, the devil, Satan, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour, and we are to resist him, being steadfast in our faith. Why is this important? Because as we go on our life and career journey, my friends, some of our goals will be blessings upon blessings upon blessings in seasons of our lives where everything seems to be going well. Some seasons we incur turbulence where the goals and the dreams and our prayers don't seem to be coming to fruition. But that's the time when God says we have need of endurance. We have to keep moving forward in faith and not turn back. Oftentimes, Satan will attack us in our high points and in our low points. In our high points, we tend to get relaxed and he seeps in like a poison. And he starts to infiltrate our mind with negative thoughts. He gets us to take our focus off of all the good things God is doing in our lives and to get us fixated on some things that He conjures up in our thinking that will divert our attention and our faith from our living God. So we must be alert at all times, especially in times of prosperity, to keep our focus fixed on God. And this morning, God awoke me early this morning, and I got up and I was praying and asking God to give me the message. And the message for today three P's invaluable. The three Ps are invaluable. Patience, perseverance, and practice. Here's what God spoke to my heart. When we're going on our journey, it's vitally important that we practice patience. Patience in waiting for God to fulfill the desires of our heart and the promises that He's made to us in His perfect timing. Sometimes they seem to be delayed, but God's delays are not God's denials. They're an opportunity for us to continue to trust and put our faith and confidence and focus on Almighty God. Has He been faithful to you in the past, my friends? Think about the blessings that God has given you. Think about the good health report. Think about the promotion that he blessed you with. Think about the circumstance that he changed when you prayed and trusted in faith that he would do it. God is still the same God now that he was then. Our tendency is to shift our focus away from God, especially when things seem to be going well, especially after we've received a tremendous blessing from God. Because we're so elated and happy over what's happening in our lives, we sometimes get lax in our disciplines in focusing on God and being alert to the attacks of the enemy. The enemy attacks in our mind. He implants thoughts that will divert our attention from the living God. And so God says, we have need of endurance. And he says in Hebrews the 10th chapter, verse 35, so do not throw away your confidence, it will be richly rewarded. You have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you will receive what was promised. You see, my friends, God has said that he is going to fulfill all the promises that he's made to you. Look at his faithfulness in the past. Where are you right now? Even if you're going through a challenging time, focus on God and not your circumstances. Don't allow the devil to shift your attention away from the goodness and the promises of God that He's made to you and His faithfulness to you up until this point. Don't allow Satan to divert your attention. Be alert in your thinking, in your mind, to the thoughts that are not of God. How do you do that? You practice patience, perseverance, and practice. Patience waiting for the promise of God to be fulfilled. Recently, I had a tremendous fulfillment of a promise that God had made to me years and years and years ago. And during those times of waiting, the devil tempted me to think that God wasn't hearing my prayer, that God wasn't acting in my behalf, that I should just abandon my faith and forget about this desire that I had, that God had given me a promise that He was going to fulfill. Nevertheless, at just the right time, God would strengthen me with a word of encouragement from the Bible. And this is why we have to continually practice being in the Bible, reading God's word on a daily basis, because from the word of God we draw life, because God's word is alive, and we draw nourishment to our spirits. There are three parts to us, my friends, we must always remember. There is our spirit, which communes with God, we're united with God, His Holy Spirit in us, there is our soul, our mind, our will, and our emotions, and then there's our body. We tend to want to operate from our body and to our soul, and then tip God by spending time refreshing our spirit. When God says the reverse is the key to sustained success, seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these other things will be added to you. How do you seek first the kingdom of God? You first focus on your spirit in worshiping God. Worship comes before anything, every day, day by day by day by day. This is the practice part of the three P's. We have to practice the discipline of getting alone with God in His Word on a daily basis. And as we practice that, we feed our spirit, and our spirit overflows into our soul, our mind, our will, and our emotions. You feel invigorated. What happens? As we focus on worship, the Spirit of God strengthens our spirit, and the spirit empowers us to move forward with confidence. That's why God says, do not throw away your confidence, it will be richly rewarded. You have need of endurance. Keep going forward. Don't turn back. Don't allow Satan and his negative actions and activity in attacking you cause you to lose your confidence in God. Don't turn back. Because he says, after you have done the will of God, what is the will of God? Simply trusting, obeying, and relying totally upon God and his promises that he's given you, that he will do what he's promised to do. So, my friends, what is it that you're believing God for? What promise has God made to you that you are believing him for? It's closer now than it's ever been. Start with the promises he's already fulfilled in your life. Give him praise and thanksgiving. Focus on what he's already done. This will ignite the confidence that you need to believe him for the rest of the journey while he's preparing to fulfill the next promise. So as we go, God is saying if we practice patience, perseverance, and practice these things, we will continue to be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. What is the outcome? The outcome is we have peace, we have the peace of God that surpasseth all understanding. We have the confidence of God to continue to move forward, even though we don't see the manifestation of the promise that He's given us. Why do we have that confidence? Because we look back and see, oh, what God has done for me so far, the excellent health report that He gave me, the promotion that He gave me, the reconciliation of that relationship that He blessed me with, that promotion. All those things are blessings that God has given you up until this point. God says, believe me for more as you go forward. And finally, we meditate on the promises of God. Meditate on the promises of God. I keep a promise book. These are scriptures, promises that I've gleaned from the Word of God, that God spoke into my heart. This is a promise for you, Tony. And so write down the promises of God, and this is how you meditate on them. You proclaim them out loud. I will keep you in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on me. God, I thank you that you promise to keep me in perfect peace because my mind is stayed on you. And then as you proclaim it, visualize what does perfect peace look like? When was there a time in your walk with the Lord that He gave you perfect peace? So you picture it, you proclaim it, you visualize it, picture it, and then you think about it. Ruminate in your mind what it was like during that season. Ponder it, and then personalize it. Tony, I will keep you in perfect peace, says the Lord, because your mind has stayed on me. God wants you to proclaim his promises, God wants you to envision his promises, God wants you to practice to his promises. And as you do, the Lord, the Holy Spirit in you will ignite those promises to build your confidence. Therefore, do not throw away your confidence. It will be richly rewarded, expected, anticipated, and prepare for it. In Jesus' name. Amen.