The French scientist, Louis Pasteur, lived at a time when thousands of people died from rabies each year, so he worked day and night on a vaccine that would save them. When he thought he had perfected one, he was about to begin experimenting with the vaccine on himself, when a nine year old boy called Joseph Meister was bitten by a rabid dog. The boy's mother begged Pasteur to give her son the vaccine, so Pasteur injected him every day for ten days and the boy lived. Decades later, before he died, Pasteur asked that only three words be placed on his tombstone, they were: Joseph Meister Lived!

So why don't we see more of God's promises fulfilled in our lives?

It is in the process of God reaching his promise that we become discouraged and give up. We live in a world that demands instant gratification and if we don't get it, we leave our jobs, our churches and even our families. But faith is a process we must all go through, there are no short cuts, we've got to pay the full price and endurance is the price tag of achievement.

For many years William Wilberforce fought with parliament to abolish the slave trade in this country. Discouraged, he was about to give up, when his friend John Wesley heard of his campaign and from his deathbed he wrote these famous words, "If God be with you, then who can be against you? Are all of them stronger than God?" William Wilberforce fought on for another 43years and then three days before his own death; slavery was finally abolished in Britain. Eventually, it was also abolished in America, so remember, don't give in, but become a winner.