Fueled by FaithSample

Day 2 - Faith secures the promises of God.

One of my favorite passages about faith is Romans 4. In Romans 4, Paul describes the faith of Abraham, and how, despite what Abraham could observe, he chose to trust God and to believe that God would do that which He had promised to do. Because Abraham trusted in God, despite not being able to see what God was doing, Abraham’s faith was “counted to him as righteousness”.

When God gives us the faith to believe something, He has already done “His part” (for lack of a better term). When God gives somebody the gift of faith, it is the job of that person to walk in the faith that he has been given. By walking by faith, by trusting in God, and by subordinating our human knowledge to that of God, we can secure the things that God has promised to us.

In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.” He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is what his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.” [Romans 4:18-22, ESV]

As Paul describes, Abraham believed God, and he believed that God was able to do that which He had promised to do. What sets apart the promises of God from the promises of man is the same thing that sets faith apart from delusion: God. When God says that Abraham’s offspring will be “like the dust of the earth”, Abraham can trust God because God is able to do anything. If another man had come up to Abraham and made the same promise that God made, Abraham would not have been able to believe the man’s promise. What is impossible with man is possible with God.

In Luke 7:50, Jesus tells a woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” While Jesus was the One who forgave the woman for her sins (which is the context of the verse in question), He forgave her because of the woman’s faith. Because the woman had faith, she was forgiven.

Luke 18 describes how a blind man approached Jesus and asked for Him to heal him. Jesus asks, “What do you want me to do for you?” (verse 41), and the man replies, “Lord, let me recover my sight.” Bear in mind, this exchange took place right after the blind man had been scolded by the people around him because he had been calling out to Jesus, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” (verse 38). In response to the man’s request, Jesus replied, “Recover your sight; your faith has made you well.” (verse 42).

While God’s will must align with what we seek in faith, we must persist, we must seek God, and we must wait patiently for what He has revealed to us. Because of the way that the man sought the Lord, because of how he refused to be silenced, and because he trusted that Jesus would heal him, that Jesus healed him. That man approached Jesus, knowing that Jesus could heal him, and because he had faith in Jesus, Jesus honored his request.

Faith comes with a sense of assurance, which is what Hebrews 11:1 tells us. If God reveals His will to us, He will provide us with the faith that we need in order to pursue His will for our lives. If we do not call out to God, if we do not continually seek Him, if we do not ask Him to help us, we may not see what God wants to do in our lives.

The final example for today (of faith securing what God wants to do in our lives) comes from Matthew 9. Jesus is approached by a woman who “had suffered from a discharge of blood for twelve years”, but she did not have the chance to approach Jesus to His Face. Instead, the woman said to herself, “If I only touch his garment, I will be made well.”, then she touched the fringe of Jesus’ garment. Jesus noticed that somebody had touched Him, then He turned around to see the woman, telling her, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” Verse 22 ends with, “And instantly the woman was made well.”

To conclude today’s devotional, I want to quote Douglas Moo’s The Epistle to the Romans, which is part of The New International Commentary on the New Testament series. In his commentary on Romans 4:18, Moo writes,

“...his [Paul’s] attention is still on the promise: how Abraham responded to the promise – in faith – and how it was that faith which secured righteousness and what had been promised.” (page 282)

Douglas Moo concludes that paragraph with an excellent description of Abraham’s faith, writing,

“...Abraham’s faith is not described as a ‘leap into the dark,’ a completely baseless, almost irrational ‘decision’...but as a ‘leap’ from the evidence of his senses into the security of God’s word and promise.” (pages 282-283)

Take God at His Word and secure that which He has promised to you.

REFLECTION:

1. Are you currently seeking God to do a miracle in your life?
2. What do you think would have happened if the blind man in Luke 18 had approached Jesus without faith? Could the man have approached Jesus without faith?
3. How would you describe faith?