“Abram believed the Lord, and He credited it to him as righteousness.” Genesis 15:6 NIV
Now the last statement in this interesting paragraph in Genesis 15 comes before us. It concerns Abram’s faith. Paul refers to this mighty act of faith in Romans 4. He reminds us that Abraham believed God before he was circumcised, that is, before he had any continual guarantee that God would do this thing. The account of Abram’s circumcision comes a couple of chapters later. Paul infers from this that acceptance before God has nothing to do with circumcision, as the Jews were insisting. Paul says that when Abram heard God say, “So shall your descendants be” that he looked up into the stars, saw their vastness, their multitude, and he relaxed. Resting in faith upon the power of God. If we focus our view on Abram’s faith, we are going to miss the point of this whole matter. There is a sense in which we make far too much of these men of old and their faith. “What mighty men of faith,” we say; “how tremendous to believe the Lord against all the evidence of the circumstances around. If we only had faith like that, we could do the things they did!” Then we compare our feeble faith with theirs and try to work up a feeling of faith within us until we are turned into spiritual hypochondriacs, always going about taking our spiritual temperature and feeling our spiritual pulse. It is indeed true that when God saw Abram’s faith, He counted Abram as righteous in His sight. It is also true that when Abram saw the Lord, he believed Him able to perform what He had promised. He rested his faith on the Lord’s adequacy.
PRAYER THOUGHT
Lord, we rest our faith on Your total adequacy, not our own.
PRAYER FOR TODAY
Lord, thank You that like Abram, we can rest our faith on Your adequacy and nothing of our own abilities. AMEN
INTERNATIONAL BIBLE READING ASSOCIATION (IBRA)
Job 3:1-24
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