Isaac

 Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Romans 4:18......Faith, in the Bible, is faith in God against everything that contradicts Him." Oswald Chambers....

..."The Lord is willing to do the impossible when His people dare to believe that He's a faithful God and means exactly what He says." A.W. Tozer

Throughout His Word, we are exhorted to "have faith in God." The Father said this to His people through His prophets in the Old Testament. Jesus proclaimed it in the New Testament to His disciples, and through them to us. Everywhere, we are told to have faith. We are also told that our faith will be challenged, oftentimes severely. There will be, as Chambers says, contradictions to His promises. There will be times when every circumstance in our life will literally scream at us to give up, turn back, to stop pressing on....in faith. Leonard Ravenhill said that "we're willing to trust to the point of inconvenience." When we enter the furnace of the desert, that's when we'll discover the depth of our faith.

Tozer speaks of the fruit of our "daring" to believe Him. In a sense, this is exactly what God does. He dares us to believe. In so many places, Jesus would ask someone after He had told them what He would/could do, "Do you believe this?" He is totally clear on what it is that He promises, and humanly, what He promised is always beyond belief as far as our rational minds can grasp. That's the crux of faith; in the midst of all the contradictions to His promises and words, will we believe Him? Will we trust Him? Not just beyond the point of convenience, but when to do so makes us appear to be the world's biggest fools?

Larry Crabb made a heartbreaking statement that I believe is chillingly true. He said, "Churches are filled with 'worshippers' who have reached the conclusion that there is no real hope in God. He's left them on their own." Somewhere along the line, they lost hope in the God of the impossible. Circumstances, the opinions of people, the whispering lies of the enemy, all seemed louder and more real than His voice. They gave Him what they believed was sufficient time to "come through" and when He didn't, they gave up. It wasn't so much that they ceased to believe in Him. They just ceased to believe in what He'd promised. Instead of everything depending on Him, they now believe that everything depends on them, and on how they handle all the challenges and impossibilities of life. Somehow, they never heard Christ's call to launch out into the deep waters of faith. They never get out of the shallows. Crabb writes, "We're more prone to maneuvering our way through life than abandoning ourselves to Him." Far too often, our "faith lives" prove Him right.

Abraham was called "the father of the faithful." Promised a son and heir, though he and his wife were already too old for children, he refused to fall prey to the contradictions of his circumstances and trusted His God. The result was his son, Isaac. For all who would be children of Abraham, He also has His "Isaac" for us. He will not tell us when the fulfillment will come, or how. He will not remove all the obstacles that exist that would prevent His promise coming to pass. He won't openly refute the whispering lies of the devil. He will merely ask, "Do you believe this?" Whatever your Isaac may be, or mine, He asks us, "Will you believe?" Will we? Will you?

Blessings,

Pastor O