September 20th, 2026
by Pastor Pendergrass
by Pastor Pendergrass
Help Is On The Way: Believing Before You See It
There is a moment in every great battle where the odds become so overwhelming that the only rational response is surrender. Two men against tens of thousands. Three hundred soldiers against an uncountable host. A small congregation in a small town, surrounded by fields and quiet roads, daring to believe that God intends to fill a building that cannot yet contain what He has planned. These are not stories of foolishness. These are stories of faith operating at its highest frequency.
And they all share one common thread: God does His best work when the odds are impossible.
The God Who Loves Impossible Odds
Scripture is filled with moments where God deliberately stripped away every human advantage before moving in power. In Judges 7, God told Gideon that his army was too large. Too large. That is a phrase most of us will never hear in our lives, and yet God spoke it plainly. If Gideon marched with a full army, the victory might be credited to human strength. So God sent soldiers home, first 22,000, then another 9,700, until only 300 men remained standing against a Midianite host described as being as numerous as grasshoppers, their camels without number as the sand of the seashore.
And with 300 men holding torches and trumpets, God routed an entire army. The enemy turned on itself and fled in chaos.
This is not an isolated incident in Scripture. In 2 Chronicles 13, Abijah led the army of Judah into battle outnumbered two to one, with enemy troops positioned both in front and behind. There was no tactical escape. There was no military solution. And yet when the men of Judah cried out to God and the priests sounded the trumpets, God delivered 500,000 of the enemy's chosen fighting men into their hands. The reason given in Scripture is simple and profound: the children of Judah prevailed because they relied upon the Lord God of their fathers.
Reliance. Not strategy. Not numbers. Not resources. Reliance.
The Vision Must Come Before the Victory
Jonathan, the son of King Saul, once looked at his armor-bearer and said something that defied every military calculation. He proposed that the two of them climb up to face an entire Philistine garrison, reasoning that there is no restraint to the Lord to save by many or by few, as recorded in 1 Samuel 14. And he was right. The ground trembled. The enemy panicked. What should have been a suicide mission became a supernatural rout.
What made Jonathan move? He had already decided in his heart what God was capable of doing. He did not wait for favorable circumstances before forming his conviction. He formed his conviction first, and then he moved.
This is the pattern that runs through every great revival account and every great biblical victory. The vision must precede the manifestation. You have to believe it before you ever see it. You have to speak it before it takes shape. This is not wishful thinking or positive confession for its own sake. This is the language of genuine faith, the kind described throughout Scripture as the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not yet seen.
The late evangelist Billy Cole carried a vision that was openly mocked by his peers. He declared that in one day, more people would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit than were recorded receiving it in the entire book of Acts. He was criticized for it. He kept saying it anyway. And then, in Ethiopia, he stood before hundreds of thousands of people and watched more than 100,000 receive the Holy Spirit in a single service. He had to say it until he saw it.
God Is Not Slack
The anchor of this entire conversation is found in 2 Peter 3:9, where the apostle Peter declares that God is not slow in keeping His promises, but is patient toward all people, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance. That word "all" carries enormous weight. It means the 7.8 billion people currently living on this planet fall within the scope of God's redemptive desire. Not some of them. All of them.
This is not a passive wish on God's part. It is an active, driving purpose that He is working out through His church, through ordinary people in ordinary places who are willing to believe extraordinary things. The prophet Joel, quoted in Acts 2, described an end-time outpouring of the Spirit that would cross every demographic boundary, sons and daughters, young and old, servants and handmaidens, all prophesying, all participating in the harvest.
We are not waiting for that season to begin. There is strong reason to believe we are already in it.
Delay Is Not Denial
Perhaps the most important distinction for anyone carrying an unfulfilled promise is this: a delayed flight is not a cancelled flight. The gate is still open. The destination has not changed. The departure is simply not yet.
God has spoken over communities and congregations things that have not yet materialized in the natural. Buildings that cannot yet contain the harvest He intends to send. Families that have not yet walked through the doors. Cities that have not yet heard the sound of revival. None of that changes what He has declared. Delay is not denial.
The instruction for this season is not to scale back the vision. The instruction is to keep speaking it, keep praying it, keep believing it, and keep working as though it is already on the way. Because it is.
The same God who routed the Midianites with 300 torches and trumpets, who gave Judah a victory against a two-to-one army, who brought a crowd of over 100,000 into a single revival meeting in Ethiopia, that God has not retired. He has not changed His methods. He still loves impossible odds, because impossible odds leave no room for anyone to steal His glory.
Help is on the way. Believe it before you see it. Say it until you see it. The harvest is larger than the building can hold, and God said so first.
There is a moment in every great battle where the odds become so overwhelming that the only rational response is surrender. Two men against tens of thousands. Three hundred soldiers against an uncountable host. A small congregation in a small town, surrounded by fields and quiet roads, daring to believe that God intends to fill a building that cannot yet contain what He has planned. These are not stories of foolishness. These are stories of faith operating at its highest frequency.
And they all share one common thread: God does His best work when the odds are impossible.
The God Who Loves Impossible Odds
Scripture is filled with moments where God deliberately stripped away every human advantage before moving in power. In Judges 7, God told Gideon that his army was too large. Too large. That is a phrase most of us will never hear in our lives, and yet God spoke it plainly. If Gideon marched with a full army, the victory might be credited to human strength. So God sent soldiers home, first 22,000, then another 9,700, until only 300 men remained standing against a Midianite host described as being as numerous as grasshoppers, their camels without number as the sand of the seashore.
And with 300 men holding torches and trumpets, God routed an entire army. The enemy turned on itself and fled in chaos.
This is not an isolated incident in Scripture. In 2 Chronicles 13, Abijah led the army of Judah into battle outnumbered two to one, with enemy troops positioned both in front and behind. There was no tactical escape. There was no military solution. And yet when the men of Judah cried out to God and the priests sounded the trumpets, God delivered 500,000 of the enemy's chosen fighting men into their hands. The reason given in Scripture is simple and profound: the children of Judah prevailed because they relied upon the Lord God of their fathers.
Reliance. Not strategy. Not numbers. Not resources. Reliance.
The Vision Must Come Before the Victory
Jonathan, the son of King Saul, once looked at his armor-bearer and said something that defied every military calculation. He proposed that the two of them climb up to face an entire Philistine garrison, reasoning that there is no restraint to the Lord to save by many or by few, as recorded in 1 Samuel 14. And he was right. The ground trembled. The enemy panicked. What should have been a suicide mission became a supernatural rout.
What made Jonathan move? He had already decided in his heart what God was capable of doing. He did not wait for favorable circumstances before forming his conviction. He formed his conviction first, and then he moved.
This is the pattern that runs through every great revival account and every great biblical victory. The vision must precede the manifestation. You have to believe it before you ever see it. You have to speak it before it takes shape. This is not wishful thinking or positive confession for its own sake. This is the language of genuine faith, the kind described throughout Scripture as the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not yet seen.
The late evangelist Billy Cole carried a vision that was openly mocked by his peers. He declared that in one day, more people would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit than were recorded receiving it in the entire book of Acts. He was criticized for it. He kept saying it anyway. And then, in Ethiopia, he stood before hundreds of thousands of people and watched more than 100,000 receive the Holy Spirit in a single service. He had to say it until he saw it.
God Is Not Slack
The anchor of this entire conversation is found in 2 Peter 3:9, where the apostle Peter declares that God is not slow in keeping His promises, but is patient toward all people, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance. That word "all" carries enormous weight. It means the 7.8 billion people currently living on this planet fall within the scope of God's redemptive desire. Not some of them. All of them.
This is not a passive wish on God's part. It is an active, driving purpose that He is working out through His church, through ordinary people in ordinary places who are willing to believe extraordinary things. The prophet Joel, quoted in Acts 2, described an end-time outpouring of the Spirit that would cross every demographic boundary, sons and daughters, young and old, servants and handmaidens, all prophesying, all participating in the harvest.
We are not waiting for that season to begin. There is strong reason to believe we are already in it.
Delay Is Not Denial
Perhaps the most important distinction for anyone carrying an unfulfilled promise is this: a delayed flight is not a cancelled flight. The gate is still open. The destination has not changed. The departure is simply not yet.
God has spoken over communities and congregations things that have not yet materialized in the natural. Buildings that cannot yet contain the harvest He intends to send. Families that have not yet walked through the doors. Cities that have not yet heard the sound of revival. None of that changes what He has declared. Delay is not denial.
The instruction for this season is not to scale back the vision. The instruction is to keep speaking it, keep praying it, keep believing it, and keep working as though it is already on the way. Because it is.
The same God who routed the Midianites with 300 torches and trumpets, who gave Judah a victory against a two-to-one army, who brought a crowd of over 100,000 into a single revival meeting in Ethiopia, that God has not retired. He has not changed His methods. He still loves impossible odds, because impossible odds leave no room for anyone to steal His glory.
Help is on the way. Believe it before you see it. Say it until you see it. The harvest is larger than the building can hold, and God said so first.
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