April 28 I Wednesday

1 Kings 3-5

Luke 20:1-26

“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.”  —Hebrews 11:1

Some of us may be familiar with the opening verse of this devotion about faith. Yet, we also have to understand that faith is always rooted in God’s Word to us. It is not a blind faith, but a faith that trusts God as we step into what He has already stated.

       When God told Abraham to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, Abraham was being tested by God. At this point, Isaac did not have a wife or any children, but Abraham stepped into this test equipped with God’s promises that he could rest his faith on. For example, in Genesis 17:19 God told Abraham, “Your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish My covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.”

       Abraham’s faith is firmly placed in who God is and His specific words concerning Isaac. In other words, Abraham is not holding onto some general promise of God, like “God is good all the time, and all the time God is good.” Abraham is holding on to specific promises about his son. Faith is always a response to what God has initiated or promised; it is not something we trust to muster up out of nothing. Our faith is rooted in the promise of who God is.

       Another point is that it does not matter how strong our faith is; our faith is only as trustworthy as the object that we place it in. We could have all the faith in the world, but if it is placed in the wrong object, it will fail. The opposite is also true. We could have very little faith, but if it is placed in the right object, it will sustain us. As an illustration, a couple of years ago, my wife and I went to the CN Tower in downtown Toronto. There is an observation deck called “the Glass Floor,” where one could stand on the glass and stare at the city of Toronto that is hundreds of meters below. It was fascinating to watch people walk on the Glass Floor. There were some that would walk across it without any problem and there were others that had a lot of fear and hesitation to step onto the floor, only putting one foot at a time on the glass. Whether people walked onto the glass with great faith or with little faith, what mattered was the object that they placed their faith in.

       What is our faith in? What we learn as we study the life of Abraham is that when our faith is in who God is and what He has declared to us, we are secure.

Prayer: Faithful God, no matter how much faith I have, I can always hold on to the truth of Your promises in Your Word. Thank You, God.