Seeing is Believing?

“The faithless will be fully repaid for their ways, and the good man rewarded for his.” Proverbs 14:14

What we believe really does matter. In the scripture above, both groups reaped the harvest of their beliefs. Convinced a situation is impossible we miss opportunities to the contrary. Our mindset renders them unrecognizable. However, when through faith we choose to believe that all hope isn’t gone, we find solutions. Doing this means moving forward without any physical evidence to stand on; easier said (or written) than done.

Abraham demonstrated such faith. “By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death” Hebrews 11:17-19.

We view Abraham and Isaac’s experience from the vantage point of several thousand years of history. We know God raises the dead from documented cases proving it happens. To Abraham’s credit he first chose to believe that an elderly, barren couple could conceive and have a son. He saw the fruit of his faith. Now he believed that God would raise Isaac from the dead in order to fulfill the promise given. What that looked like Abraham didn’t know; no one had ever been resurrected. Abraham again traveled in virgin faith territory with only God’s word to base his conviction upon.

We’ll never know the outcome if Abraham had been faithless and unbelieving. Scripture says this was Abraham’s test. I think it tested Isaac also. Isaac, a young man capable of understanding the situation could have resisted any efforts to bind and place him on an altar to be sacrificed. He didn’t refuse to participate. Both men complied with God’s instructions and both walked away with a different and deeper faith in God. Isaac’s first recorded faith venture gave him knowledge that only hearing about God couldn’t produce. Looking back we know the happy ending, but these two men walked this out in pure faith. Not knowing how God would keep His word, they chose to believe that He would and He did.

            “And without faith it is impossible to please God” Hebrews 11:6. The goal of pleasing God requires faith. His plans are so outside the box and our comfort zone, faith is mandatory for success. We don’t need to look for or invent impossible situations. God doesn’t ask us to go out on any old limb with a chainsaw, only the one He designates. Be assured faith is the key element for seeing the impossible manifest. We choose whether or not to have faith and we receive what we believe.