Abram’s Deep Faith

Read Genesis 12:4-8

Abram was a man of faith. When someone promised us something, say a certain present we really want for Christmas, is our excitement and gratitude often expressed at the receiving of the promise, or the receiving of the gift? At the receiving of the gift. But yet you see Abraham worshipping and thanking God before he has even entered into the land of promise, even before he had a son through whom his descendants could be born.
Our celebration at receiving the gift is not bad, and is even understandable given the fallibility of humans, we fail to keep our promises all the time. But with God it is something different. Faith in God takes what is invisible and uncertain and makes it visible and certain.
Abram celebrated and worshipped God as though the land was already his and from had already come a great nation. We often need sight to believe in something with certainty, “I’ll believe it when I see it” is our motto. Faith in God promises make what we can see, the things about tomorrow as certain and solid as concrete.

The only certainty you can have about tomorrow is what God has promised us. As we continue to follow the story of Abraham you will see more than anything he is a man of deep, immense faith in God. My friends we can be filled with uncertainty about so many things in the future, and why because we are unable to see how we can control that uncertainty.

We can say our doubt is caused by what we see out in the world, or because of our circumstances, but the truth is we doubt, because we doubt God, we do not believe he will be faithful. We say we believe in his promises and then use sight to bring us that assurance. But it fails the moment what we are seeing doesn’t look like the way we would fulfill the promise.

Better yet, some of us will look and say “but God how are you doing to deal with this or that?” like Abraham saying okay we will go to Canaan but am I going to feed my family on the way there. We tell God we can’t trust him unless he shows us the whole plan.

God has given us all the promises we need, we do not need more promises. You do not need to know more of the plan. You doubt, anxiety and fear is not caused by not knowing enough of the plan, it is because of your unbelief that God is faithful and he is in control.

Abraham did not fear the route that God would lead him because he knew the destination was certain and God’s planned path to that destination had a reason. The promises of Abraham were not realized in his lifetime. Some of those promises weren’t fulfilled until 400-500 years later, some of the promises are still being fulfilled today.

Don’t put your faith in what you can see, and understand, nor even in the promises themselves, put your faith in the God who made the promises. The God who has never been unfaithful and who holds all things in his hands.

Question:

What promises of God do you doubt the most? Why do you doubt that promise?