Dear Friend,

Greetings in Jesus’ name! I have some exciting news for you. THIS MONTH, we begin offering my new book Build Your Foundation — Six Must-Have Beliefs for Constructing an Unshakable Christian Life, which will be released next month in March! You can go to our online store at renner.org to order your copy. This book will help ground you in the six foundational doctrines of the Christian faith in Hebrews 6 that every believer should know. To be rooted in the sound teaching and the safe doctrine of Scripture is the foundation we all need to build our lives on effectively for the Lord. You will want this book for your personal Bible study or group studies!

This month, I want to especially let you know that one of our most personal and greatest honors is to minister to our friends and partners and to pray for what they are standing for in their lives. So before I share what’s on my heart for you today, I want to tell you that we are here for YOU, and we would be delighted to put our faith together with yours for whatever you are facing or believing God for. When you call or write to us with your prayer request, we’ll pray and pray fervently. And we’ll always keep your prayer request confidential. Truthfully, we pray for you every day anyway — but when you let us know how to pray specifically, it just helps us to be more targeted when we pray for you!

So much is happening in the world, and this is really a time for all of us to keep our eyes on Jesus and to stay in a place, or position, of faith. Today I want to speak to you about holding on to your faith for whatever you have been praying for and believing to come to pass in your life. Hebrews 10:23 says, “Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised).”

• What are you believing for to come to pass in your life?
• What do you want God to accomplish through you?
• What are you believing to see come to pass in your family?
• What do you want to see God do in your job? In your business?

Dreams are powerful, but they usually seem impossible at first. However, those who dare to do the impossible are the ones who eventually see the impossible come to pass.

There are myriad examples in the Bible of individuals who had a dream. For instance, consider the dream God gave Abraham — called the father of our faith — regarding a new land and a new people. When God first spoke to Abraham about the son He would give him, Abraham and his wife had long been infertile and unable to conceive a child. The thought of having a baby probably seemed like an unattainable fantasy to them. They could have asked themselves, Is this really the plan of God for our lives, or is this a hallucination?

God also promised Abraham a new land but didn’t tell him where it was located. In their efforts to find that land, Abraham and Sarah were stricken with colossal challenges, problematic circumstances, and horrible internal family problems. First, Abraham’s father died. Then they lost their nephew, Lot, to Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham also took Hagar as a second wife, producing a son that didn’t belong to Sarah, along with a great deal of jealousy and strife. In addition, Abraham and Sarah experienced a terrible famine in their promised territory that forced them to leave due to a lack of food. Traveling to Egypt in search for food, they soon found themselves evicted from that land as well.

At any moment, it would have been so easy for Abraham and Sarah to say, “Enough is enough! Pack it up — we’re going back home to the city of Ur!” But instead of giving in to defeat and discouragement, they held tightly to the dreams God had put in their hearts and kept pursuing those dreams until they had witnessed their fulfillment.

If you want to see the dream God has given you be fulfilled in your life, it is imperative that you have this same attitude. As Hebrews 10:23 says, “Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised).”

Today I want to point out the words “hold fast” in this verse. Abraham and Sarah “held fast” to their dream, and that is what you must do as well. The phrase “hold fast” is taken from the Greek word katecho, which is a compound of the two words kata and echo. The first word, kata, carries the idea of something that comes downward.

You could say the word kata carries the force of something that comes down so hard and so heavily, it is overpowering and dominating to the point of being subjugating. When this force arrives on the scene, it conquers, subdues, and immediately begins expressing its overwhelming, influencing power.

The second part of the word katecho is the word echo, which simply means I have and carries the notion of possession. This is the picture of someone who has sought and searched for one particular thing his entire life. After years of seeking and searching, he finally finds the object of his dreams. Joyfully he rushes forward to seize it and hold it tight. He wraps his arms around that object, making it his very own. Finally, he can say, “I have it! At long last it is mine!

When kata and echo are compounded into the word katecho, it literally means to embrace something tightly. However, because of the word kata, we know that this is the image of someone who finds the object of his dreams and then holds it down — taking control of it, dominating it — even sitting on it so it doesn’t slip away!

In Hebrews 10:23, this same idea is used positively to describe sitting on your word from God and refusing to let it slip out and get away from you. This is the attitude you must have if you want to see your God-given dream come to pass. You have to wrap your arms around that word from God and never stop believing and pursuing your dream until it comes to pass. If you’ll “katecho” your dream, it won’t be able to get away from you, nor will anyone else be able to take it away from you!

The word katecho in Hebrews 10:23 could be interpreted this way: “And let us hold fast to our confession, tightly wrapping our arms around it and embracing it with all our might, rejecting all attempts of anyone who tries to steal it from us.…”

When you finally discover God’s will for your life — when His plan finally begins to awaken in your heart and you know exactly what you are to do — hold fast to that dream. Tightly embrace what God has shown you. Seize it — wrap your arms of faith around it. Hold it down, and hold it tight!

Whenever you are tempted to become discouraged, give up, and release your dream, remember Abraham and Sarah. Although it took them awhile to receive their dream of having a son — and although they had to overcome titanic hurdles along the way — they refused to let go of that dream, and they eventually saw it come to pass. In the end, they discovered that their dream was not a hallucination; it really was a word from God!

If you’ll hold tight and refuse to let go of YOUR dream, it will just be a matter of time until you see it come to pass! Place all your weight on top of that dream so that NOTHING can steal it away from you!

Maybe you’ve been telling yourself, Come on! I’ve waited and waited for my dream to come to pass. God hasn’t done anything that I thought He was going to do. I’ve seen others blessed; I’ve seen others healed. But I’m still sitting here with the same old unanswered prayers. I’m sick of it all! I’m not going to believe and wait any longer. Forget it — I’m letting it all go!

If this sounds like you, I want to encourage you to read again the instruction found in Hebrews 10:23. It says, “Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering.…”

The word “waver” is taken from the Greek word aklines, which conveys the picture of something that does not bend or something that is fixed and unmoving and is therefore stable and enduring.

Interestingly, if you remove the a from the word aklines, you are left with the word klines, which pictures a person who is bowed down. With shoulders sloped and body bent over, this person is so tired that he can barely stand. Ultimately, he becomes so exhausted that he throws in the towel and gives up. In fact, the word klines is the same root in Greek for a couch or a bed. So when a person is klines, his “give-up” attitude causes him to head for the couch or bed where he lies down, stagnates, and wastes away.

Many people give up hope and quit believing because they get tired. The devil whispers in their ears and tells them, This thing you’re believing for isn’t ever going to happen! If it was going to happen, it would have happened by now! This is just a fantasy. You are wasting your time and throwing away precious years of your life. Why don’t you forget it, let it go, and move on with your life?

As long as you are energized by faith, you’ll keep moving in a forward direction. But the day you let loose of your faith and back off your position, it won’t be too long until a spiritual sadness will come over your life. Spiritually speaking, your shoulders will slope; your head will drop; and you’ll feel like someone pulled the plug on your energy level. Your eyes will drift toward the couch or bed, and soon you’ll end up completely going to bed on your faith!

Don’t let that happen to you!

What God promises, He will perform. It may take a while for that promise to come into manifestation, but eventually it will come. In the meantime, you must choose to believe that He will do what He has promised. That is the key! You must set your heart and commit your will, making an irrevocable decision to believe His Word regardless of how you feel, what you t hink in your natural mind, what others say, or how circumstances look.

It’s time for you to make the decision that you have too much invested to turn back now! Dig in your heels; drive down your stake; and tell the devil that you are not going to move from your position of faith! Aggressively choose to believe that what God has promised, He will always do. Once you’ve made that kind of life-changing decision, it will only be a matter of time before you’re rejoicing because of your manifestation!

Oh, I’ve so enjoyed ministering this to you today!

It’s time for me to close my letter to you this month. But let me tell you again that we would love to pray with you for whatever you are standing in faith for in your life. And please…pray for us as we push the powers of darkness out of so many people’s lives with the Word of God and the power of the Holy Spirit. We need your prayers!

We love you and thank God for you!

We are your friends, brother and sister, and partners in Jesus Christ,

Rick and Denise Renner
along with Paul, Philip, and Joel and their families