HOLD FAST TO THE PROMISE!
Kay Keith Peebles 1/7/2022 22.01
I got saved (born again) in 1980 during a marriage crisis. At the moment Jesus came into my heart, He spoke to me. Inside my heart I heard, “I’m going to restore your marriage.” He also gave me a scripture to claim: Joshua 24:15 “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
My husband and I had both grown up in church but we were only religious. We lacked the true born again relationship with the Lord. The night I got saved, the Lord gave me a promise. When God gives us a promise, we have no idea how long it will be before we see it come to pass. Neither do we have any idea the warfare that will be required to continue to pray, hold fast to the promise and see it through. Our flesh wants to believe it will be immediate but reality says it will take time. Either way, if you hold fast to the promise without wavering, continuing to battle until it manifests, it will come to pass! May I remind you that God promised Abraham a son but Isaac was not born until 25 years after the promise was declared. Abraham was 75 years old when the Lord spoke the promise but he was 100 when Isaac was born.
The promise God made to me was in 1980. I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit five years later and my ability to “hear” the voice of God increased exponentially. The Lord told me in January of 1987 He was moving us to Tampa Florida. We moved into our home there in August of 1987. What Tampa had to do with the promise I did not know but we were moving on. In 1988 while doing my daily prayer walk the Lord spoke to me again regarding my family. He told me my parents/brother and I were not saved growing up. Neither was my husband’s family. We went to church but Jesus never came home with us. My daughter was saved the year I began Bible Study Fellowship (1978) before the time I was born again. My husband and son had not been born again. The Lord asked me to fast for my whole family’s salvation including Larry’s family.
Excited, I began a water fast, walking and praying for their salvation each day. On the fifth day, the Lord spoke to me: “I have seen your fasting, I have heard your prayers; your family shall be saved!” A year went by and nothing happened. Two, three and then year 4 began and still there was no sign the promise was happening. One day when I was walking I asked the Lord to at least show me some progress, hope, something! He asked me to look at the grass in the yard nearby. “What do you see?” He said. “I see nothing but green grass.” I replied. He said, “If you peeled the grass back, what would you see?” I responded that I would see ants, worms, and other bugs living and thriving in the dirt under the grass, a whole community of life. He said, “Yes, all kinds of activities are going on beneath the surface, you just can’t see it from the top.” Eureka! I understood. Within just a few short months my husband was born again! It was 1992, four years after the fast but 12 years after I had been born again. We went to Benny Hinn’s church because Larry needed a healing from a back injury. It was there he met Jesus. Could it be that the Lord moved us to Tampa so that we could be at the right place and the right time for His promise to take place? I did not know it, but my son had been born again around 1990 at a church youth group meeting but he never told us.
My parents were another matter. By 1994 at age 81, dad had developed serious heart issues. While going through testing he had a major heart attack during an angiogram. One hour prior, while I was praying over the angiogram, the Lord spoke so very clearly to me, “He shall live and not die!” When the doctor called to ask my permission to do the surgery because of the heart attack, I gave a resounding YES! He told me dad would not live without the surgery but he had made a living will not desiring to be resuscitated. The Lord had already prepared me and I said, ‘Do the surgery’. I hopped on a plane to Texas and that promise rang in my heart. He did live through the surgery miraculously and the Lord enabled me to keep believing for both my parent’s salvation. In April of 1996 both mom and dad had pneumonia. Dad was showing signs of digressing physically by then. As I packed my bags to fly home the Lord spoke, “This is the time they will be saved.” My heart leapt. What do I do? I asked. He said, “Nothing. Just be a donkey; bear the burden of their care and love them, I’ll do the rest.”
The days passed by as I cleaned the house, planted flowers in the garden, cooked, made coffee each morning ran errands and got them to doctor’s appointments. The Lord gave me a supernatural strength that week. I was up early on day 5 and the smells of coffee waxed through the house. Mom came in from the bedroom and her first words to me were: “I don’t know what you have in your church, but I want it!” Floored, I replied, “It’s not my church, I have Jesus in my heart!” “May I pray Jesus into your heart?” She said yes!!! The peace of God apprehended her as He entered and a sigh of relief let me know He was there to stay. Thirty minutes later dad was up and my mom told him what happened. He asked me to pray for Jesus to come into his heart also; and He did!
Four months later dad died. We had been there the whole week before just to visit, but realized he was near the end. We read scripture to him and talked about how glorious heaven is and he would see other family members there. Without knowing we left the morning of his last day to see friends a couple of hours away. Before we left we talked and prayed with him. He asked for forgiveness for some past mistakes and we held each other in sweet communion. He died peacefully in his sleep that night.
What I am about to tell you may sound absolutely crazy to you. Our western church culture is far from what I was thinking but I must be true to the truth of this testimony. Driving to the funeral home to see his body and finish making the plans for his memorial the enemy tried to make me believe he wasn’t born again. I wrestled with thoughts continually bombarding my mind. It was a cloudy day and starting to sprinkle which added to my mental torment. I asked the Lord to please give me a sign Dad was secure in heaven. I just needed some assurance because death is deafening and the enemy’s taunts were relentless.
I was re-living the promise God gave me for my family’s salvation and it was so deeply imbedded in me I knew if there was any question about dad’s eternity I had to move quickly. You see, although dad had already been embalmed, if the Lord said to, I would go back and pray to raise him from the dead because the enemy had no right to his soul or his body! I had the PROMISE of God! I asked my husband to pull over into a parking lot so that I could seek the will of God. Immediately the Lord said, “Look out of the automobile window.” I turned my head to glance outside and saw a huge, bright double rainbow in the sky! The Lord spoke again, “I put My rainbow in the sky to assure you of My promise.” It was a double rainbow! I was doubly sure. At his memorial service I rejoiced as we sang “How Great Thou Art”!
Mom followed Dad home in 2001. I slept on the floor of her nursing home room the last two nights. I sang hymns to her, read the Bible, and kissed her goodbye. She died after I left the room to go to the airport to pick up Larry who was flying in that morning. My sister in law told me in her last moments she looked over at her picture of Dad we had nearby, smiled and released her last breath.
We celebrated at their memorials because they were not there in the caskets; they were alive with the Lord. We will see them again! My brother and his family are still on the list, but I have no doubt. Although by now it looks impossible, it did when the Lord told Abraham at 99, “This time next year you will have a son.” Am I not comparing myself to Abraham in any way. This is not about me or anything I did. It is all about the One Who made the promise. He alone is faithful!
My husband and son were born again within four years after the promise. My Dad and Mom were eight years following. Larry’s parents were born again in 2012, 24 years after the Promise. Our grandchildren and our children’s spouses are all born again. It is now 34 years after the promise and it’s still alive as I continue to believe for my brother’s family. We are standing on the precipice of a Great Awakening and I have no doubts His promise won’t come to pass completely.
Scripture assures us when God makes a promise, declaration or gives a word, it will come to pass if we do not give up and lose heart.
“Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.” Hebrews 10:23.
“The word of the LORD came to me saying, ‘Jeremiah, what do you see?’ And I said, ‘I see the branch of an almond tree.’ Then the LORD said to me, ‘You have seen well, for I am [actively] watching over my word to fulfill it.’” Jeremiah 1:11-12.
“By faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged Him faithful who had promised.” Hebrews 11:11. God will give you the strength to conceive the “seed” of His promise and carry it until it manifests!
God’s Word (Promise) has creative abilities. If He says it, it WILL come to pass! We must believe it, pray for it, war for it and hold fast to the promise.
“Behold, I send the Promise of My Father upon you; but tarry in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high.” Luke 24:49.
And what happened on the Day of Pentecost? They were in one accord, full agreement, praying and waiting for the Promised One, the Holy Spirit to come and He did! They didn’t know what moment, what hour whether morning or evening, how He would manifest, none of that mattered. They just knew since Jesus made the Promise, the Holy Spirit would come and they would be endowed with power from on High! The Promise of the Holy Spirit and the endowment of Power from on High was fulfilled and is still being fulfilled in believers like me every day.
“Then the LORD answered me and said: ‘Write the vision (promise) and make it plain on tablets, that he may run who reads it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time; but at the end it will speak, and it will not lie. Though it tarries, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.” Habakkuk 2:1-3. Emphasis mine.
The Lord is coming back! He is coming back soon!!! Do not let go of the Promise. Do not sack off, lose faith or give up. Press in, hold on, believe and you will make it to the end. He is coming back for a bride without spot or wrinkle. He is coming back for a body full of faith. He is coming back for those who held fast to the Promise He made and only those who are looking earnestly, steadfastly in faith will obtain the Promise. Whatever you need to do, pray, fast, seek—Do it! He’s coming. The Promise is nigh.
