"Steadfast and Firm"

"For a testament is of force after men are dead: otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth." (Hebrews 9:17 KJV)

  "He came into the very world he created, but the world didn't recognize him. He came to his own people, and even they rejected him. But to all who believe him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. They are reborn - not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God." (John 1:10-13 NLT)

 I heard a message yesterday that caused me to think about something very significant with the way God gets us to believe, as this message revealed that it was God who gave Abraham his faith; meaning that faith is not something we get on our own. It took me quite a few moments to think about, but then I realized that Scripture where Paul says, "Three things will last forever - faith, hope, and love - but the greatest of these is love." (1 Corinthians 13:13 NLT)

 Understandably, God is the one who came to Abraham. It was God who told Abraham to leave his home and go to the place He would show him. "Faith is the substance of things hoped for," as the Scripture says; if you're told you that you will inherit something, then you will hope that it will happen; faith is that which keeps you expecting that what you hope for will come to pass. 

 Therefore, it was God's promise to Abraham that gave him the faith, when he actually believed what God told him; and when he believed what God said was true, God credited it to him as righteousness. And we know from what we read about his life that he was a good man; but he really wasn't a righteous man, because he did do some things that were wrong. 

 But it is God who makes the call of who is righteous or not! God alone is the is the judge and the jury, and we who believe and follow His Son, although we are not yet totally righteous, He sees us as if we are totally and completely righteous, because of the sacrificial blood of His Son. Therefore, we too are given the faith to believe because of what God has done! 

 And, if you really get down to it, it is God that gives us all three of those things that last forever, because only He is has the eternal qualities to pass them out! Hope is not something that just happens, there must be some kind of action that has taken place, which causes us to have hope. The fact the Jesus rose from the dead, that is the resurrection power that gives us this hope for eternal life; and God did that in order to give us that hope!

 Without God's love for us, which was so over-the-top, it is almost unbelievable, we would have never know what real love even means! Yes, that's right; without God's help we wouldn't really know what real love looks like; and we would really know how to try and love Him back!   

 Don't ever stop believing...

"Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ and become one with him. I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ. For God's way of making us right with himself depends on faith. I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead!" (Philippians 3:8-11 NLT)