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How’s your hearing? In the three major events in Abraham’s life he heard from God and responded in faith. He heard God tell him to leave his homeland and he did. He heard God tell him he would have a child at a ripe old age and he believed and he must have also responded because Sarah became pregnant. Finally he heard God put him to the test by offering Isaac on an altar, and he responded and God intervened. Faith is more than confession. It is confessing what you hear and believing God for the results. Faith is more than going to church or paying your tithe or being a minister, teaching Sunday school, or being a law abiding citizen. There is a hearing of faith. Do you do religious things out of habit or are you responding to the leading of the Spirit? Are you justified because you go to church, practice some religious things and feel pretty good about yourself because you are not like those sinners or are you justified by living by faith, by the hearing of faith and responding accordingly? Unless you get alone with God and overcome your fear of what he may require and learn to discern the leading of the Spirit, all your religious works may prove to be meaningless and of no true value. Only after Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness did he perform the rite of circumcision. Are your works based on faith or ritual? You are not safe from the enemy if you live by law. The law doesn’t save and self-righteousness of no value to God. We are made righteous by faith and not by the works of the law. By the works of the law no person is justified. A person can be a good husband and father, go to church every week, be involved in Sunday school, read on the pulpit, be a teacher for a profession and have no faith at all and when disaster hits him the church is in shock because he is such a good religious person. This is not make-believe, it just recently happened. Be still and know that I am God. Get alone with God. Spend time just listening. It may prove to be more productive than all your religious habits. Faith comes by hearing. The doing, if there is any, comes afterward. Let God steer the ship in whatever direction he wills. Your job is to obey, to respond in faith. Abraham is the model for the New Testament church. The letter of the law kills. It is the Spirit which gives life. Walk in the Spirit. Live in the Spirit. Be hearers first and then be a doer and then you will be blessed like faithful Abraham. Amen |