Andrew Murray's Secrets Of Faith Chikamu

In Abraham we see how God not only asks for faith, and rewards faith, but also how He works faith by the gracious training that He gives. When God first called him, He at once gave the great promise, “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (12:3).When he reached the land, God met him with the promise that the land should be his (see 12:7). When Abraham returned from the battle against the kings, God again met him to renew the promise (see 15:5). Before the birth of Isaac, in the words of our text, He sought to strengthen his faith (see chapter 17). And once more, in the plains of Mamre, He spoke: “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” (18:14). Step by step God led him until his faith was perfected for full obedience in the sacrifice of Isaac. As “by faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out” (Heb. 11:8), so by faith, at the close of forty years, he was able, without any promise, in fact in apparent conflict with all the promises, to obey God’s will to the very uttermost.

Children of Abraham, children of God, the Father makes great demands on your faith. If you are to follow in Abraham’s footsteps, you too are to forsake all, to live in the land of spiritual promise with nothing but His word to depend upon, separated unto God. For this you will need a deep and clear insight that the God who is working in you is the Almighty who will work all His good pleasure. Do not think that it is a little thing and easy to live the life of faith. It calls for a life that seeks to abide in His presence all the day. Bow before God in humble worship until He speaks to you too: “I am Al-mighty God; walk before Me and be blameless… And I will . . . multiply you exceedingly” (Gen 17:1–2). When Abraham heard this, he “fell on his face, and God talked with him” (17:3). There you have the secret birthplace of the power to trust God for everything that He promises.

And while God taught Abraham what it was to believe in God with all his heart, Moses taught Israel what the first and great commandment was: to love God with all your heart. This was the first commandment as the origin and fountain out of which the others naturally proceed. It has its ground in the relationship between God as the loving Creator and man made in His image as the object of that love. In the very nature of things it could never be otherwise: man finds his life, his destiny, and his happiness in nothing but just this one thing, loving God with all the heart and all the strength. Moses said: “The Lord delighted only in your fathers, to love them” (10:15); such a God was infinitely worthy of being loved. All our religion, all our faith in God and obedience to Him, our whole life is to be inspired by the one thought: We are to love God with all our heart and all our strength. Every day the child of God has as his first duty to live out this command.

Let us learn the double lesson. This perfect heart, loving God with all our might, is what God claims, is what God is infinitely worthy of, is what God—blessed be His name!—will Himself give and work in us. Let our whole soul go out in faith to meet, to wait for, and to expect the fulfillment of the promise that to love God with the whole heart is what God Himself will work in us.