Faith is trust. Faith is rest. And Abraham had it in spades. Abraham's faith in God is enlightening to consider. Among many other things, he:
left his home and all he knew because God told him to "go" (Genesis 12:1-9) believed God's promise to him of fruitfulness (15:1-21) was willing to sacrifice his only son at God's command (22:1-66) Abraham was truly a man of faith. And that faith pleased God. We can learn so much from observing the faith of Abraham.
But Abraham lacked faith, too. God's Word recounts for us a number of times when Abraham did not have faith. Times when he did not trust or rest in what God said. For example, Abraham:
took a second woman to bear him a son in an attempt to "help along" God's plan (16:1-16) grew tired of waiting for the promise and asked God to change course (17:18-19) twice called his wife his sister for fear of losing his life (12:10-20; 20:1-18)
As followers of Jesus, our primary objective in service to our King is to live by faith in Him (Habakkuk 2:4). Anything less than faith is sin. We must fight the pride within us and our propensity to:
"help" God out when things aren't progressing to our liking wish for God to fulfill His will according to our timeline rather than His fear man and because of that fear compromise what we know we are to say and do Brothers and sisters, we must come to recognize that "whatever does not proceed from faith is sin" (Romans 14:23). This is simply a reminder that it is not enough for us merely to not live as the pagans do (Romans 1:29-31), we, the servants of the King of kings and the Lord of lords must kill everything within us that does not please Him. And that includes a lack of faith (Hebrews 11:6). We must NOT:
lose our hope, whatever the odds lose our joy, no matter how long the wait lose our conviction, regardless of the facts
Dear Christian, let us labor to keep this truth in the forefront of our minds because "He who calls [us] is faithful; He will surely do it" (I Thessalonians 5:24).
"Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away." - Matthew 24:35
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