Today’s post is a follow up to my last one on the life of Abraham and growing in our faith.  We’ll pull out some more stuff as it relates to Abraham and Sarah.  Our text this time will be based from the book of Hebrews:

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going.
By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise.
For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.
By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised.
Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.
(Heb 11:8-12)

The approach to this entry will be pretty simple (as usual). I post that passage, knowing fully well that statistically speaking, over 70% you will skip it. But please, scroll back up and read the passage carefully, and prayerfully journey through this with me and see what we come up with together.

That whole chapter is one worthy of study since we generally know it as the ‘hall of faith chapter’, but that term gets thrown around so much we forget that it is the FAITH chapter.

The key thing that jumps out at me from looking at it: Faith requires obedience.

Abraham didn’t take time to think about it. He didn’t go consult all his spiritual mentors to see the consensus on what he should do. The original passage in Genesis details that when God called him, Abraham left his land. But not only that, he left not knowing where he was going.

Interesting.

If you’re like me, you have to admit to yourself everything in us fights this act of obedience and we don’t like stepping out UNLESS we know where God is taking us.

I know from experience, I’ve begun speaking a prophetic word for someone, and have no clue where I was going with it until once I started to share what little God had already given me for them. I’d open my mouth, and share the little bit I knew to share, and as I shared, more would enter in my spirit or mind to speak, and then more, and like a chain-link it just kept coming and when I was done, couldn’t help but think “man! I’m glad I stepped out and delivered that!” But when prophesying, sometimes usually you don’t even have the whole message until you step out and begin to share that first ‘link’ in the chain, and then the rest of the chain starts to come out as well.

Sometimes also, we mentally KNOW God heals and we give mental ascent to the Word of God, but we don’t actually step out and pray for a sick person. When the obedience required from faith would have us go for it and ‘not know where we’re going’ sometimes. I’ve had instances where I prayed for someone with one eye open in case what I was praying for really came to pass because I had to admit it seemed like “what am I doing!” and I didn’t want to miss it. There’s nothing wrong with mentally doubting things, but there’s something wrong with not obeying God with the thing He’s compelling you to step out and do.

Sometimes we think if a thought of doubt goes into our heads for a split second at all, that that means we have doubted and sinned and we’re not acting or praying in faith and the prayer won’t be answered as a result.

Have any of you reading this ever seen the original Ghostbusters movie? If you haven’t then do NOT go rent it because in hindsight it’s pretty demonic, but recall with me if you have seen it, the climax at the end. The woman-man-dude-monster-thing that the four main characters have set out to annihilate tells them they will be destroyed by whatever they imagine. And suddenly, out of nowhere comes this big giant King Kong-sized “Staypuft Marshmallow Man”walking through the streets of New York.  Three of the characters look to a fourth one as he explains that he tried to think of the most harmless thing possible, and the marshmallow man was what “popped into mind”. So this was the way they were going to be destroyed—all because Dan Aykroyd’s character “accidentally let it pop into mind.”

Doubt is NOT like that, my friends.

Doubt is not accidentally having a thought pop into your mind saying “this won’t happen.” Real doubt and unbelief comes when, like the opposite of obeying in faith, you act on the doubt and don’t step out in obedience. Doubt is “they won’t get healed, therefore I won’t bother trying.” Doubt and disobedience are tightly intertwined.

I guarantee you, if Abraham packed up his stuff and ideas were going through his head like “what if this God is a liar and He’s not taking me anywhere?”, from reading the account we can see that clearly he didn’t ACT on those doubts. If he really doubted, he never would have left his homeland.

And I know, some of you are thinking of the passage in the first chapter of James that says “let him ask in faith without doubting” and about the double-minded man tossed by every wave, and so forth. Keep in mind what we’ve just established—that faith requires obedience or it is not really faith.

Faith Requires Obedience

For some reason I’ve never heard the following passage of Scripture used for any purpose other than legalism and salvation—people quoting from it to show how you’re not a Christian because you do things, but doing things are evidence that you are saved, like how an apple tree grows apples and so on.

While that is true, and I have no problem with people using that passage to teach that, it goes further and lots of practical application can be drawn from James 2:14-26. Give it a careful read, or my written entry might seem touch and go;

What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?
If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food,
and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?
So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.
You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe–and shudder!
Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless?
Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar?
You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works;
and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”–and he was called a friend of God.
You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.
And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way?
For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.

The simplest explanation I’ve ever heard for faith was when I was sixteen. It was that faith is not mentally believing a chair will hold your weight IF you sit down on it. Faith is only faith when it is accompanied by the action of going ahead and sitting down in it and not worrying if the chair will cave in under you or not. You know it won’t, even though you have not tried it before with that particular chair, and are totally unaware of whether all the legs are holding up properly or if there’s anything wrong with it. You have no evidence yet that it will support your weight, other than for lack of a better word—‘assuming’ it will.

Abraham did not have faith just because mentally he believed God would keep His promise. His faith was demonstrated by how he left his home and followed God somewhere else. He had faith BECAUSE he demonstrated it by putting Isaac on that altar.

Faith has everything to do with action. Most people don’t like that idea, but we can’t sidestep verse 26 that says “For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.”

It’s not merely believing that God can speak words of knowledge about people to you for you to speak towards their edification—it’s opening your mouth and sharing it and knowing and trusting God that you’re speaking forth his heart and not your own imagination.

Faith is not merely believing that God ‘can’ or ‘does’ heal today.  It’s stepping out and receiving our own healing or laying hands on a sick person and they get better.

Faith is not merely believing that the Gospel is true, but as Romans 9 says it’s believing in your heart AND doing something–in this versse, it’s speaking with your mouth that Jesus is Lord-which by the way is not just a salvation prayer (if it is even that), but is a constant and continual lifestyle, not just a one time thing.

So many things about faith are not just believing in your heart, but appropriate actions that accompany them. I don’t respond this way to a lot of people, but when many say to me “I agree (or believe) that the Bible says this or that” about any particular topic related to miracles, in my mind I think to myself “well so what?—you’re not living like it–there’s no demonstration accompanying your statement/profession/confession.” The same with people who say to me they are Christians but are in actuality are living a lifestyle of sin and immorality, or just simply they exhibit the fruit opposite of what the Bible says is fruit of the Holy Spirit–ok, these people I do say things to!—and it doesn’t matter if you say you mentally agree with it if you don’t demonstrate fruit worthy of repentance. It takes almost nothing of us to mentally believe something is true or accurate. The rubber meets the road when we act on the truth.

What does the Word of God say the Master will tell his servant on that day? “Well believed my good and faithful servant?” No, but well DONE. Again I repeat myself, I’m not talking about actions are what make us right with God—that’s legalism. But actions demonstrating our faith, and they demonstrate we belong to God and that we are in obedience to what the Lord says in His Word.

What of Rahab the prostitute?

Would she be recorded as an example in James here if she only “believed in her heart” that the two spies were from Israel and that God was giving Israel the land of Canaan. If she merely ‘believed’, her and her family would not have been spared. It was from DOING something that Scripture records her actions and honors her so many generations later for us to read.

Faith involves action, not just mere thoughts.

Blessings.