Chester: How's your cake?

Ralph: What do you mean?

Chester: Well, I see you have your cake, but I was wondering how it tastes.

Ralph: I don't really eat it, but I feel confident knowing it's in view and at hand.

Chester: That's a start. Because if you don't have the cake, 'eating it, too' is not an option. But, like the promises of God, once you get them, you're supposed to do something with them.

Hath not the mouth of the Lord spoken, if you be willing and obedient, you shall eat of the good of the land.

The promises of God are not injected intravenously. They are heard, believed, practiced, wrought, and inhabited. When you take them, they take you. Those Israelites who counted the size of the giants as greater than the promise of God never obtained the promised land. Sure, God may have pitied them, but He did not give it to them, anyway.

God knows what it takes for you to make His word become your flesh - that's the point. What occurs inside you in the process of laying hold of His promise empowers you to enter and continue in it. The struggle expended in crawling, falling, and straining enables you not only to stand and walk, but to continue standing and walking. Who tells a parent to just 'stand the kid up, he's a human who's made to stand'? No one. It requires effort, and full engagement.

The nature of faith is the same. It guarantees that once you get the cake, you can eat it, too.