Abraham, the father of faith…

Abraham, the father of faith, hoped against hope and staggered not at the promises of God, through unbelief; but he believed that whatever God promised he is well able to do…

Romans 4:16-25
The Message

16 This is why the fulfillment of God’s promise depends entirely on trusting God and his way, and then simply embracing him and what he does.

God’s promise arrives as pure gift. That’s the only way everyone can be sure to get in on it, those who keep the religious traditions and those who have never heard of them.

For Abraham is father of us all. He is not our racial father—that’s reading the story backward. He is our faith father.

17-18 We call Abraham “father” not because he got God’s attention by living like a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody.

Isn’t that what we’ve always read in Scripture, God saying to Abraham, “I set you up as father of many peoples”?

Abraham was first named “father” and then became a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing.

When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn’t do but on what God said he would do.

And so he was made father of a multitude of peoples. God himself said to him, “You’re going to have a big family, Abraham!”

19-25 Abraham didn’t focus on his own impotence and say, “It’s hopeless.

This hundred-year-old body could never father a child.”

Nor did he survey Sarah’s decades of infertility and give up.

He didn’t tiptoe around God’s promise asking cautiously skeptical questions. He plunged into the promise and came up strong, ready for God, sure that God would make good on what he had said.

That’s why it is said, “Abraham was declared fit before God by trusting God to set him right.”

But it’s not just Abraham; it’s also us! The same thing gets said about us when we embrace and believe the One who brought Jesus to life when the conditions were equally hopeless.

The sacrificed Jesus made us fit for God, set us right with God.
———

‌Wed, Aug 11
From Faith to Faith

MEDITATE ON THE WORD
by Gloria Copeland

“And [God] brought [Abram] forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be. And he believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness.”
— Genesis 15:5-6

Do you ever have trouble believing the Word of God? Not just agreeing with it mentally, but really believing that what it says will work for you?

I do. There are times when the promises in the Word stagger my mind. There have been times when I’ve felt so defeated and the circumstances around me looked so bad that it was tough for me to believe I was “more than a conqueror” even though I knew God said I was.

What do you do when your mind staggers like that at the promise of God? You meditate on that promise.

Scriptural meditation simply means thinking about and reflecting on the Word of God. It means pondering a particular scripture and mentally applying it to your own circumstances again and again until that scripture permanently marks your consciousness.

That kind of meditation can affect your life in a way that almost nothing else can. It can, quite literally, alter your mind. That’s what happened to Abram.

When God first told him that he was going to father a nation, he was an old man. His wife, Sarai, was also old. What’s more, she had been barren all her life. How could an aging, childless couple have even one child—much less a nation full of them? Abram couldn’t even imagine such a thing. It contradicted his entire mindset.

But God knew the mental struggle Abram would have, so He didn’t just make him a verbal promise and leave it at that. He gave Abram a picture of that promise to meditate on. He took him out into the starry night, turned his eyes to the sky and said, “So shall thy seed be.”

Can’t you just see Abram staring out at the stars, trying to count them? Filling the eyes of his heart with the promise of God?

That’s what meditation is all about. Taking time to envision the promise of God until it becomes a reality inside you. It’s tremendously powerful, and by focusing on the scriptural promises God has given you, you can put it to work in your life just as Abram put it to work in his.

Don’t just read the Word. Meditate on it today.

Come join the Adventure!

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