faithful to His promises.
“He [Abraham] considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead…” Hebrews 11:19a
I love this verse in Hebrews 11. Hebrews 11 is one of my favorite chapters in the entire Bible. Throughout the chapter, we read multiple accounts of people with great faith who trusted God to fulfill His promises to them. None of their stories were perfect. Some of them included adultery, most lying, and one, even murder. BUT GOD... still faithful to His Word and His people, fulfilled every promise for those who had faith to believe.
I particularly love Abraham’s story. In Genesis, God gives Abraham a promise that he would be the father of many nations and that the promise would originate through his son Isaac. Abraham waited decades for the birth of Isaac. And after many years, in Genesis 22, the Bible says, “And after these things, God tested Abraham and said to him, ‘Abraham! Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you’” (v. 1-2).
In this story, God’s testing was to reveal Abraham’s heart: Was he more attached to the promise or the One who promises?
I think a lot of times, I’ve read this story, stories like it, or looked at my own story, and thought, “God is testing me so HE can see the quality of me.” But the truth is that He knows the beginning from the end. I think some tests are not so God can see the quality of me. It’s so I can see the quality of me.
“By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, ‘Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” (Hebrews 11: 17-18)
For God to ask Abraham to offer up Isaac would look like (from human logic) that the promise wasn’t real,
that God was mistaken,
Or that maybe, just maybe, Abraham may have misheard God and made the entire thing up in his mind.
But verse 19 tells us about something about Abraham that the Bible doesn’t go into too much depth about:
“He [Abraham] considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead…” Hebrews 11:19a
During those decades of waiting, Abraham had to have grown to know God as faithful.
In moments that probably weren’t recorded in detail, Abraham saw God show up.
He spent time with God in the waiting.
He’d walked with God, and he’d known God to be faithful.
What’s crazy about this entire story is that in Hebrews 11, Abraham had faith that if he sacrificed Isaac, God could raise him from the dead. But leading up to Genesis 22 (the actual account), there had never been a recorded incident of anyone raised from the dead. For Abraham to believe that if he sacrificed Isaac, God could raise his son from the dead was literally unheard of and un-thought of.
But because Abraham knew God, he knew God would have a ram in the bush
even if it didn’t look the way he thought it would
& even if it didn’t come until after the sacrifice.
He’d had practiced faith in believing God before, & he was willing to do it again.
Sometimes we look for the big, God moments that will define our lives, but that’s not where we always find Him.
There are many accounts of God showing up to those He loves, not on a stage, but in private.
In the middle of their everyday lives, God has met great people of faith, and in those private moments, those people have learned the faithfulness of God.
It’s His faithfulness in the seemingly small, mundane moments that help us to have confidence in Him in the big ones.
Be encouraged, friend.
If you’re feeling hidden, know that you’re in a perfect place to learn His faithfulness.
He sees you,
And He will fulfill His promises to you in due time.
