Believe God

I like this painting of Abraham. It’s not Abraham after he is the Father of Nations. It’s Abraham when Abraham Believed God. He  believed Him  before there was evidence of the fulfillment of His promises.

What does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” Romans 4:3

God made promises to Abraham, promises that he would be  blessed to be a blessing.  Those promises were kept by God in His time and in His place. Abram had to first become a new creature, at least one with a new name. He had to leave country and family and go to a land he did not know. He had to have faith he would father a nation even as his body and that of his wife withered and aged. He had to believe even when asked to give up his son. 

Abraham  believed God but it wasn’t easy and it wasn’t quick.

Abraham had to become God’s man. To be God’s man means to be separate, one of the definitions of holiness. “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple. Luke 14:26. Now that’s separation.

“Living a life of faith means never knowing where you are being led. But it does mean loving and knowing the One who is leading. It is literally a life of faith, not of understanding and reason—a life of knowing Him who calls us to go. Faith is rooted in the knowledge of a Person, and one of the biggest traps we fall into is the belief that if we have faith, God will surely lead us to success in the A life.”

A life of faith is a life of change, not instant and permanant change but ebbing and flowing change. “We feel the presence of God around us when we pray, yet we are only momentarily changed. We tend to keep going back to our everyday ways and the glory vanishes. A life of faith is not a life of one glorious mountaintop experience after another, like soaring on eagles’ wings, but is a life of day—in and day—out consistency; a life of walking without fainting.”

Like Abraham we believe God. We trust when there is no visible evidence. We follow when we can’t see the destination.  We learn and are changed by the One whose presence is constant but not always felt and whose power is limitless but not always seen.