My friend, Rick, has a keen mind and a true heart for God. When he or a friend is stirred by an insight from the Spirit, or wanting to enter more fully into a particular promise, Rick is famous for asking, “what would that look like?”

It’s a great question for the curious, earnest believer. It helps to focus and ask for more. It provokes the imagination. That’s all good.

Here’s the thing. God likes to show and tell us about how it is in the land of the promise we’re seeking. He reveals elements of what it would look like. He tantalizes, but does not open the whole package.

For example, he told the Israelites that the Promised Land was good. That it flowed with abundance - milk and honey, no less. In the New Testament God shows and tells through the actual lives of Jesus, the disciples and the believers who followed after them. Their acts in His power inspire us to enter Kingdom realities.

The partial revelations we get from God are invitations. They’re promises brought by declarations, or dreams, or desires. He wants us hungry.He knows we ain’t gonna buy the cow if we can get the milk through the fence.

Initially, we’re excited to pursue the revelation that stirs inside us. At first the question, ‘what would it look like?’ propels us to obtain the promise - to buy it at it’s own price.

Here’s the thing. That question must implicitly contain the willingness to fight, obey and persist in apprehending that which is shown. The fire in the heart must declare, “If I get even a glimpse, I WILL GO.”

What if we don’t really like ‘what it looks like?’ What if we suspect it will take much longer to enter that land than we thought? What if the cost seems bigger than the promise’s enticement?

At this point, continuing to ask ‘what would it look like?’ no longer seems like such a good question. Are you still hungry? Are you still sure that land is yours? Could the question that once propelled, have sunken to an artful stall?

After seeing a bit of ‘what that would look like’ we might have another question. “Did I really hear from God, after all?” Alas, therein is the heart of the natural man revealed.

Right here you’re presented with the tiny choice with gigantic ramifications. If you trample your doubts and press into the promise you, yourself, will become God’s THIS for the next one who asks, ‘what would that look like?’

Equivocate too long and you’ll watch, as yet another promise flies away from another victim of self-dupery.