By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went.
By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise:
For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
From all these amazing scriptures, we can glean some wonderful truths.
First of all, we see that God called Abraham to leave his present pagan world for another. Does that sound familiar? We are called by God, when we accept His grace and salvation, to become new creations who leave this present worldly system behind and start looking for a heavenly city, just as these heroes of the faith did. God clearly warns us that being friends with this present world system is to be enemies of God.
Abraham went out not knowing where he was going. In any journey of faith, we, too, will find ourselves entering uncharted territory. When my wife and I first came to this tropical paradise, we didn’t know a single soul. We were going by faith, solely trusting in Him alone. Hence the word faith. What does faith mean to you?
Sadly, many of us will get it wrong. In fact, I believe that for most of us, we will be relearning this truth over and over until one day the "light bulb" goes on. First of all, faith is defined as trust in another to accomplish something for us. I trust that when I get on an airplane, the ground crew, maintenance personnel, and the pilot are all doing their best to get me to my intended destination. That is, I am placing my faith in the entire airline operation. Real faith is accepting that I could do nothing on my own to fly to Timbuktu or anywhere else. The same is true about our relationship with the Lord. First, we could do absolutely nothing to reach Him, but He came down and became the perfect man, righteous before God. Then, He provided everything for me to become the righteousness of God. My faith is placed totally and solely in Him and what He has done for me through His perfect, sinless life, His obedient ministry fulfilling all of God’s law, and His death and resurrection.
Another aspect of faith that we get terribly wrong is that it is a power, like the Force in Star Wars. It is not! No amount of self-will, positive confession, positive self-talk, or visualizing things as already done will ever come close to real faith. Faith is not a formula or some magical force that some possess but others don’t. It is something every human has the ability to do: trust in God’s word and promises. The ground is level at the foot of the cross; no rich or so-called important person has more ability to have faith than I do. In fact, the more self-centered, self-reliant, or proud a person is, the farther away from genuine faith they will be. You see, genuine faith is trusting someone else to do something for me that I cannot do. Oh, the simplicity of the gospel, and how we so often love to add things to it that we shouldn’t.
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