Counting your chickens before they hatch

“Don’t count your chickens before they hatch."

Is this sound advice, or a statement of unfaith that keeps us from basking in the promise of our Heavenly Father?

For faith is the evidence of things unseen, we see an egg, and so we know there is the promise of a chicken inside. And yet we have come to such a society of pessimism that tells us to expect the worst and if something good happens that’s a plus, whilst the Bible attests to the opposite.

Faith tells us to believe before we see the natural outcome. We are directed to spread the seed of faith; certainly at times our seed falls on barren ground, yet it also falls on fertile soil, is the work of sewing seed then not valuable simply because some of it did not grow? Of course not. We have done what the Father directed and we walk in expectation of the goodness of the Father, rather than the plotting of the enemy.

The way I see it, I must believe that the chicken will grow inside the egg, because it is only by the blessing of my Father in heaven that I have the egg to begin with. As it says in Matthew 7:9, “does a parent give their child a stone rather than bread, or a snake rather than fish? Of course not.” And so when given blessing we need to begin seeing it as a blessing, instead of something just waiting to be nothing.

I once lived a life always waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for my mistakes to push me over the edge, waiting for the worst because I didn’t believe I deserved the best.

Truly we don’t deserve the best, yet the word says everything that belongs to the Father belongs to His son, we walk in the authority and the inheritance of God, and so we know then what belongs to us. That leaves us with a choice, to believe the lie that says we cannot count on Gods promises, or we can choose to walk in faith and believe that His word is true.

As for me I choose to count my chickens before they hatch, because it was a gift from my Father.

Justin Gardner pastors at River of Life Fellowship, 702 Church St., Sandpoint. The church can be reached at 208-255-7111.