Fully Persuaded Faith

“Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”  Romans 4:3

Abraham believed God.  To do so seemed irrational, illogical, and, from the look of things, rather irresponsible, but the faith of one man changed not only his own future but that of the entire world.

“Go,” God said.  “Move away from the relatives and relocate to an I’ll-let-you-know-later destination.  From your descendants I will build a great nation, and through your life I will bless the whole earth.”  This divine command and the promise it carried would have sounded exciting had Abraham been forty years old with four sons, but, by this time, he was seventy-five, his wife was eligible for full Social Security benefits, and the never-used nursery had been converted to an office decades earlier.  But because Abraham believed God, he packed his stuff, took Sarah’s hand, and headed south.

“That’s crazy!” some will say, but Abraham’s crazy faith was “credited to him as righteousness”(Rom 4:3).  Since he was certain that God would do what seemed impossible, his sin was no longer counted against him and the holy goodness of God—procured for him and for us by Jesus on the cross—was added to the ledger of his life.

“Face the facts!” some will say, but faith looks beyond earth’s dead ends to the One who made the way in heaven.  “Without weakening in his faith, Abraham faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead…yet he did not waver through unbelief…being fully persuaded that God had the power to do what he had promised”(Rom 4:19-21).  Our faith for salvation and for all of God’s promises is not in the outcome but in the all-powerful God who determines the outcome.  Abraham did not merely believe that he would become a dad when he was old; “Abraham believed God”—the God who had the power to make the promise a reality.   And because Abraham believed God, he was blessed and we are blessed.

Our faith ought to be a bit easier than Abraham’s.  God asked him to believe something which was yet to happen.  He asks us to believe something that has already occurred—that “Jesus was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification”(Rom 4:25).  And, this God “who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were”(Rom 4:17 ) can surely be trusted not just for life eternal but for all we need during life on earth.

Have a fully persuaded faith.  God’s power to keep His promise can never be diminished, defeated, or destroyed.

Above all else, beyond all else, in spite of all else, believe God.