Abraham Believed

Genesis 15:5-6 - Then He brought him outside and said, “Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” And he believed in the LORD, and He accounted it to him for righteousness. 

Abraham. A barren wife, therefore childless. God named him the father of many nations. God told him his descendants would be more than the stars he could try to count. Abraham believed and as history has shown, it has been done. You will find this throughout the pages of the Old Testament. While Abraham saw the beginning of this promise/covenant, he did not see the final outcome, which is still unfolding. But he trusted God. That was the most important choice he made, to just believe. 

There is another account where we are told to believe. Imagine if all would, like Jesus said, Believe in Me. Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?” (‭John‬ ‭11‬:‭25-26‬)

Because Abraham believed we are here. And to God it was counted as righteousness. What if we believed in Jesus the same way? What if we put our trust and faith in Him the way Abraham did in God? Aren't we told the same thing...it would be counted as righteousness?

This belief, again, is not just knowing who Jesus is. It's a deeper knowing Him. It's putting faith and trust in Him for everything. Illness strikes, death occurs, job is lost...the bottom of life falls out. What do we do? Panic, fret, lose hope? Or do we go to God and ask for His strength and wisdom to get through this? If we know and believe in Jesus, we trust Him for it all. If we do not know Jesus we can't fathom the notion that He can still provide, heal and comfort, miraculously. 

Believing is a heart change. It's a knowing deep inside when God knows your true intent toward Him and at the time of that giving of your heart to Him, He fills you with His Holy Spirit who begins the process of this heart change. For me it started as a sudden strong desire to learn more about God. I got hooked up early in Bible studies. I took classes because I wanted to know more about Him. That alone doesn't make me better but it gave me a foundation that has shown me from Old Testament to New why it is important to know Christ, God's entire plan of salvation...and most important, why. 

This world will end someday soon, I believe. We see the signs that the Bible has pointed out for the last days. It's in the Word of God. He is Alpha and Omega, Beginning and End. All the days are in His hands. Our days are in His hands and He has the final judgment. He is the Judge who doles out our final resting place in the end...heaven or hell. If that is so why wouldn't one want to trust in Him alone? 

Philippians‬ ‭3‬:‭8-11 - Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.