A "tear the roof off" kind of faith

 

Yesterday was a good day.

Waking up several times through the early hours of Sunday to give attention to the very loud manifestations of my illness, I eventually decided to give up on any last vestiges of sleep and begin preparing myself for a day of preaching.
 
Smart shirt- check. Hair combed- check. Bible and notes in hand- check.  

Those were the easy things. The hard part was battling bouts of extreme nausea (which necessitated in several “pitstops” along Sunningdale Drive on the way to church), a cough that could wake the dead, as well as the creeping sense of fear and unbelief that I was in no way in the right frame of mind (or health) to be preaching on “A tear the roof off kind of faith” that morning. But the longer I get to walk with God, the more I’m realising the less and less it has anything to do with me. Elementary I know, but God sometimes has to get us to our end so that we can begin to allow him to do only what he can do. Faith is learning how to live by his faithfulness.

 

Someone we can take a few pointers from is Abraham, the father of faith. Way past the age of having children, Abraham and his wife Sarah are given a promise from God that they will have a son. But just like us, the enemies of faith often are given a louder voice of prominence in our lives than the call of abandoning our own resources (or lack of resources) and fully trusting what he has said. Here are the top 3 robbers of faith that we can pick out from Abraham’s journey and take heed of in ours:

 

-Circumstances (either too good or too bad...relying on our 5 senses alone)

*Faith is not a denial of the facts, it’s the acknowledgement of THE fact! In God’s economy, faith trumps reason everytime!

Abraham was told by God to go claim the land of Canaan, but he finds it drought stricken and in famine so he runs to Egypt where to save his own skin he lies about his wife to the Pharaoh there

-Compromise

*the root of all compromise is found in an underlying disbelief that God is good

Abraham promised many children, but at age 85 Abraham stops trusting God and takes matters into his own hands and sleeps with his female servant Hagar

-Critical Spirit

*whether at God or at others, very dangerous as it’s a sin of idolatory. It’s putting my reasoning above God’s by saying, “I will be God unto myself.”

At age 99 Abraham laughs in God’s face when God confirms the original promise (Sarah pregnant at 90?)