Hebrews 11:1-3 - September 23, 2009

Please enjoy our guest writers devotional for today!

Hebrews 11:1-3 “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good report. Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” KJV

Have you ever been in a situation that really challenged your faith in God? On Monday we talked about patience and the testing of our faith and that we can choose how to respond to seasons of trials and testing. Being a christian surely doesn’t mean that we are not going through difficult times, but it does mean that God gives us the strength to face, go through and come out of those seasons stronger than we’ve been before – if we let him!
God’s desire is, to bring us to completion and that we grow in our dependency to him. We are supposed to “live by faith and not by sight”. If we knew how things would work out from the beginning, there was no need for faith. But faith is
“the evidence of things not seen.”
Remember the testing of Abraham’s faith in Genesis 22. God said to Abraham to take his only son Isaac and to sacrifice him as a burnt offering! How about that one? Think of Abraham’s situation: Years before he had received the promise of God to become a great nation but he did not have a son to fulfill this promise. He and Sarah tried to help fulfill this promise by doing something other than God told them and as we know, Hagar gave birth to Ishmael. After Sarah did receive the promised child Isaac, Abraham had to send Ishmael away. And now God asked of him to offer up the only son through which the promise to become a great nations could be fulfilled.
Even though this must have been an unbelievably hard decision, Abraham chose to obey God. He chose to let go of how he thought things would work out even though he had received the promise that it would be through Isaac that his offspring would be reckoned. Abraham’s obedience to God was even greater than the love towards his son. Even though he did not understand the reason for what God was asking of him, he was about to offer up Isaac by faith, knowing that God could raise the dead if he chose to. In the end, God greatly rewarded this obedience and Abraham’s trust in him.

This is a very dramatic example, but the principle is the same in every situation that you face. Are you willing to lay it all down at the feet of Jesus; your desires, your thoughts, your own abilities? Sometime when we receive a promise from God, things seem to go in the exact opposite direction. But how do we react in those moments? Hebrews 11:6 “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” NIV It doesn’t matter how the testing of your faith might look like. Even though at times you’ll find yourself stuck in situations that you don’t understand, believe that God is bigger than those circumstances! Embrace those circumstances as a chance to grow. If you seek the Lord in the middle of the testing of your faith, he will surely reward that and your faith will increase more and more – even if you can’t see it yet! Because “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”.