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Showing posts with label trust. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trust. Show all posts

Saturday, October 7, 2017

God's Promise Realized Through Faith - Romans 4:13-25

That famous promise God gave Abraham - that he and his children would posses the earth was not given because of something Abraham did or would do. It was based on God's decision to put everything together for him, which Abraham then entered when he believed.

If those who get what God gives them only get it by doing everything they are told to do and filling out all the right forms properly signed, that eliminates personal trust completely and turns the promise into an iron clad contract! That's not a holy promise; that's a business deal.

A contract drawn up by a hard nosed lawyer and with plenty of fine print only makes sure that you will never be able to collect. But if there is no contract in the first place, simply a promise - and God's promise if that - you can't break it. This is why the fulfillment of God's promise depends entirely on trusting God and his ways and then simply embracing him and what he does.

God's promise arrives as a pure gift. That's the only way everyone can be sure to get in on it, those who keep the religious traditions and those who have never heard of them.

For Abraham is father of us all. He is not our racial father - that's reading the story backward. He is our faith father. We call Abraham "Father" not because he got God's attention by living a faithful life, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody.

Isn't that what we're always reading in Scripture "I set you up as Father of many peoples?" Abraham was first named "father" and then became a father because he he trusted God to do only what God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing.


When everything was hopeless Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn't do but on what God said he would do. And so he was made father of a multitude of peoples.

God himself said to him you're going to have a big family, Abraham!

Ceremonies and rituals serve as reminders of our faith. They instruct new and younger believers, but we should not think that they give us any special merit before God. They are outward signs and seal that demonstrate belief and trust. The focus of our faith should be on Christ and his saving actions, not on our own actions.

Paul explains that Abraham pleased God through his faith alone, before he ever heard about the rituals that would become so important to the Jewish people. We too are saved by faith. It is not by loving God and doing good that we are saved; neither is it by faith plus love or faith plus good works.

We are saved only through faith in Christ, trusting him to forgive all our sins. For more on Abraham, see his profile in Genesis 18.

The promise (or covenant) God gave Abraham said that Abraham would be the father of many nations and that the entire world would be blessed through him. This promise was fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Jesus was from Abraham's line, and truly the world was blessed through him.

Paul points out that the promise to Abraham to be the father of many nations extended beyond Israel to all the nations of the world. Abraham never doubted that God would fulfill his promise. His life was marked by mistakes, sins, and failures as well as by wisdom and goodness, but he consistently trusted God. His faith was strengthened by the obstacles he faced.

His life is an example of faith in action. If he had looked only at his own resources for subduing Canaan and founding of a nation, he would have given up in despair. But he looked to God, obeyed him and waited for God to fulfill his word to him.

Reference summary used from The Message Bible and The Life Application Bible, KJV, Tyndale Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, IL

Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Monday - Praise, Worship, & Trust - Psalm/Tehillim 146:1-4 - 12/26/16

The psalmist voweth perpetual praises to God. He exhorted not to trust in man.

Verse 1 ... (Hallelujah) PRAISE ye the LORD. ... Praise the LORD, O my soul.

Psalm 103:1 ... BLESS the LORD, O my soul: & all that is within me, bless his holy name.


Psalm 146:2 ... While I live I will praise the LORD: ... I will sing praises unto my God while I have any being.

Psalm 104:33 ... (The psalmist's purpose to praise him.) I will sing unto the LORD as long as I live: I will sing praise to my God while I have my being.


Psalm 146:3 ... Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, ... in whom there is no (salvation) hope.

Isaiah 2:22 ... Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of?


Psalm 146:4 ... His breath goeth forth, he returned to his earth; in that very day ...

Psalm 104:20 ... (An exhortation to bless the Lord for his mighty power, & wonderful providence.) Thou makest darkness, & it is night: wherein (all the beasts thereof do trample on the forest.) all beasts of the forest do creep forth.


Psalm 146:4 ... his thoughts perish.

I Corinthians 2:6 ... (The wisdom of God is revealed in the gospel,) Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, that come to nought:

Scripture references used from The KJV Bible, SouthWestern Co., Nashville, TN


Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Jeremiah 12:5 ... Men & Horses ... June 20, 1982



Jeremiah 12:5 ... If you have run . If you get weary running with men. How can you compete with Horses?

This sermon was preached by my late sister-in-law's pastor, on June 20, 1982.

If thou has run with the footmen, & they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horeses? and if in the land of peace, wherein thou trustedst, they wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?... Jeremiah 12:5



I never heard him preach this sermon, but this Title & Scripture just amazed me. So what the Lord told him, I missed out on.



I had plenty time to get back with him and ask him to share - explain this to me, but he passed away about a year or may two/three ago. He was a 'big' figure for the 'African-American' community. He was featured in several forms of media.

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

A Tornado Is Comin: Book Review (2005)



El-Roi . The Strong One Who Sees . Exodus 16:12,13.. God is not sleep....HE is at the same place HE was when Jesus was on the cross.

I reviewed this book in 2005 while being a Writer & Host of a Baptist Site.

Finding peace in all kinds of weather.

Finding the Storm Cellar of God's Power.

This California - bred - and - raised woman couldn't believe it. She looked out at the Illinois landscape from her hotel room and couldn't comprehend the power of the storm that was lighting up the night sky. The TV blasted the warning that a tornado was possible and urged everyone to stay tuned for further coverage.

A tornado never did appear that evening, but speaker and writer Pamela Sonnenmopser told her of the time she lived through the devastation of one.

As she made her way through the winding road leading home, the clouds began to gather green and ominous. Suddenly the shrill shrieks of the emergency broadcast system came on the radio.

The announcer on the radio stated in monotones that a tornado with one-hundred-mile-an-hour winds was heading to Rushville, Missouri, at at rate of thirty-five miles per hour.

In their home, she made a few phone calls to warn several people.

Remembering more tornado tips, she ran to the center of their house and surrounded her body with blankets from her bed. There was nothing she could do except pray as the roaring sound of the nearby tornado was accented by sounds of breaking glass and tearing metal.

God had protected her from the storm.

Pamela concluded her story by saying,

We don't have to live in worry. We just need to walk in faith and trust that God is in control when we can't see what HE is doing.

The next time you feel like a tornado of worries is heading your way, trust God. HE is our storm cellar of protection and care. We can trust HIM.

Kathy Collard Miller, Author -- Partly Cloudy with Scattered Worries. The author is a popular conference speaker and best-selling author. She has appeared on the 700 Club and other radio and TV programs and has spoken in five foreign countries.