Aligning & Activating Your Decrees

That’s what the Scripture means when it says: “I have made you the father of many nations.” He is our example and father, for in God’s presence he believed that God can raise the dead and call into being things that don’t even exist yet. Against all odds, when it looked hopeless, Abraham believed the promise and expected God to fulfill it. He took God at his word, and as a result he became the father of many nations. God’s declaration over him came to pass: “Your descendants will be so many that they will be impossible to count!” (Romans 4:17-18)

Abraham engaged with the Word of God to him through his trust and his faith.

Abraham had to engage to take responsibility to activate that word in his life through his faith. He trusted in what God said and His faithful nature to fulfill that which He spoke.

When God speaks, He is looking for the activation of our faith and our alignment with His voice. Sometimes when the Lord speaks, His Word is like a seed released into our hearts and lives. We cultivate the environment in which that seed will grow. We must cultivate our hearts and lives to make room and the right environment for those seeds to grow, and the seeds grow in the place of faith and trust in God.

Part of the task of cultivating the right environment to steward His promise is done in process. I have often said that the two things I never wanted to mention in my prayers as a young believer were patience and process, because both in my mind equaled pain. Just the thought of those two words made me cringe. I thought the more I prayed about patience or process, the more I would end up facing situations where I would need more patience and process. That equaled, “It’s going to be a long and painful process to get to see your promise fulfilled.”

That “P” Word—Process!

I read different stories in Scripture about how the Lord released promises to His people, and often there was an intense process to steward that word and birth that promise. It scared me. I had a major fear of pain, and I didn’t even realize it. I would read the story of Joseph and see the amazing dreams, the promises from God, and I would cringe all the way through the story until he got to the palace and then I was fine. I hoped the less I asked God to teach me about process the less I would find myself needing to go through a horrible process to get to my promises. How naïve and silly I was!

So can you guess what happened? Can you guess what the Lord started to do? He started to heal me and show me the power of process. Some of my processes I thought I was going to die in, yet I would come out the other side. Time and time again I would see the power of process and the beautiful things that the Lord does in process—that place between the promise and its fulfillment.

I began to learn that God cares about the destination, but He really cares about the “in between” place—the process place. He is the God of process. Now I realize—many, many years later—that what we need to move into our promise, what we need to carry the promise is given to us and happens in the process. There is so much glorious preparation that His Spirit accomplishes in the process.

One of the greatest things that I have learned—through many situations where I thought I was going to die with my promise—is the power of activating my faith with what He is saying and aligning my decree with His decree. It continues to be revealed within me that our true reality is the unseen realm. Our true reality is what He says. In the in-between place, the place of waiting for our promises to be fulfilled, we are shown again and again and again that our true reality is living by every word that comes out of His mouth and speaking things that are not as they are (see Matt. 4:4; Rom. 4:17).

In First Kings 18, Elijah heard the sound of rain:

Then Elijah said to Ahab, “Go get something to eat and drink, for I hear a mighty rainstorm coming!” (1 Kings 18:41 NLT)

You know what I love about the passage? Elijah heard the sound of a mighty rainstorm coming before it manifested. Elijah’s reality was not what was going on around him—there wasn’t any sign of the rain cloud about to manifest—but his reality was “God said rain is coming.”

So King Ahab went to eat and drink. At the same time Elijah climbed to the top of Mount Carmel, where he bent down to the ground with his head between his knees (1 Kings 18:42 NCV).

The place of intercession. The place of focus. The place where his ears were covered by his knees. The place of intentionality to focus only upon what God had said, engaging in the true reality—the unseen realm, the realm of what God had decreed. Such beautiful alignment and positioning to speak forth those things that are not as they though they are.

I love that the prophetic word of God establishes, transforms, creates, and manifests the unseen realm into the seen realm. The decree of our mouths aligning with the decree of heaven establishes His agenda upon the earth.