Trusting God's Promise: Abram's Faith in the Stars

``So the ball is back in God's court. How is he going to respond to that? How's he gonna be respond to the questions, the doubt, the frustration? He's gonna say, how dare you? How dare you question me, God? Question my faithfulness. Get out of here. I'm moving on. I wanna work with somebody who's a little easier to work with and has real trust unlike you, Abraham. I'm out. I think that's how most of us would respond. But how does God respond? Instead, we have this tender moment that I like to envision in my mind's eye as a loving father speaking to their worried, anxious child. [01:02:20] (46 seconds)  #GodsTenderReply

Walking with Jesus is not stepping into this alternate universe filled with unicorns and rainbows and cotton candy. Jesus steps into our reality, which is messy. The Holy Spirit, he enters our hearts, which, let's face it, it is a bloody battlefield of good versus evil, and we're losing as long as we don't have God fighting for us. He comes into our mess. We don't have to clean it up first. The God of scripture, he deals with us and he walks with us in real time and in real life. [00:56:28] (42 seconds)  #JesusEntersTheMess

Does Abram have a good reason to doubt and ask questions? Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. One of the first things we learned from Abraham is that, Abram, faith does not mean that you don't have doubts or questions. Faith doesn't mean that you don't have doubts or questions. The years were passing. They were going on and on. Most of his contemporaries were dying, yet he continued to rely on the Lord. He continued to cling closely to cling tightly to that promise, but the waiting was painful. [01:01:03] (47 seconds)  #FaithWithDoubt

Faith looks ridiculous. It looks absolutely ridiculous. Think about Abram's story. You have a guy who's around a 100 years old and his barren wife believing that God is going to make them the parents of a nation as numerous as the stars in the sky and sand on the seashore. That's ridiculous. That's foolish. Trusting God makes us look foolish to the world. [01:11:22] (35 seconds)  #RidiculousFaith

Like, many moments do we find ourselves in where we have doubt, we have questions, we have pain, we have anxieties, we don't know what to do. And I think in those moments, we can look at the example of father Abraham and trust God. There's moments when we don't know what the right thing to do is, and God says, trust me. Trust me. [01:05:19] (35 seconds)  #TrustLikeAbraham

Abram says, amen, Lord. Amen. He was convinced in the depths of his heart and his being that the Lord was true, that his word was dependable and valid, even if all of the external information pointed to the contrary. Even if all the other facts in the story said, yeah, this you are not gonna have any kids, Abram. [01:08:16] (28 seconds)  #AmenToGodsWord

Now we like salvation by works. That's kind of our default as human. We like salvation by works because it gives us the illusion of self help. That we can do something that will make us lovable, or we can do something to contribute to our salvation, but instead, salvation by faith means that we abandon ourselves to God. We say we no longer belong to ourselves, we belong to you, God. We belong to Jesus, which is a much better place to be, instead of just having the illusion that we can actually have control of our lives. [01:09:06] (40 seconds)  #SurrenderNotSelfHelp

Because God calls us to make decisions and position our lives, structure our lives around him and not around what's going on around us. So when we are deciding to swim against the flow of our culture, whether that's in our workplace or that's in school or that's even in our home, when we decide to stand firm and pull ourselves in as close as we can to Jesus, they're gonna look at us and say, you look like an idiot. You look foolish. You look ridiculous. Why aren't you doing don't you understand what's going on with the rest of us? Why are you acting like that? Placing your trust in Jesus looks ridiculous to the world. [01:11:57] (46 seconds)  #SwimAgainstTheFlow