Faith Is As Faith Does

This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture that reject fear. Fear is a spiritual force used by Satan to keep people down. Instead, faith in God is championed. The story of Sarah is discussed, highlighting her faith and belief in God's promise to have a child. Despite her initial doubt, she trusted God and eventually gave birth to the promised son. The importance of having faith and trusting God in all situations is emphasized. It is mentioned that God chooses and loves each individual specifically. Welcome to Fear No Fear. Grace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. May the Holy Spirit embrace you today. This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture. We reject fear in any and all forms. Fear is a spiritual force, the currency of darkness and ignorance. It's what we inherited when Adam gave up his faith and Satan uses it to keep people down. His only weapon is words. If he can get you believing or looking at words of fear, he's got you. Instead, we champion faith as an allegiance to God, as a belief and trust and loyalty to the Lord God Almighty. We accept the evidence of His word as unvarnished truth, as is, just as it's written. We get close to His perfect love through the word, and perfect love casts out fear. 1 John 4.18 All scripture is taken from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Visit eBible.org 1 Peter 3.6 So Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord, whose children you now are if you do well, and are not put in fear of any terror. I never really liked Sarah. She didn't seem to believe God about anything. She laughed at God. She had a bad idea about promise fulfillment and God's second thoughts about it, and she got a child anyway. Was she a whiner, conniving, nagger? I didn't really know, but she was my least favorite wife in the Bible, and I wasn't doing her any justice at all. I was really, really, really not seeing it. I mean, the writer of Hebrews put her into the hall of faith. Hebrews 11.11-12 So what had I been missing? Well, first off, she laughed at the idea that she would have a child. She did not laugh at God. She had faith in God. She had belief in God. She loved God, but she laughed at the idea because this was just a little munch. She knew her body. She'd been in it a long time. She knew how it worked. She knew what it could do. She knew what it couldn't do. She couldn't shake the reality of her physical self from the equation, and that made it laughable. How could she conceive a child? I mean, she'd literally been around women who had born children all her life. She must have known other barren women. She was no longer a young maiden herself. She'd been through menopause at this point. She intimately knew everything to do with herself and with the biological cycle. She knew what the deal was. Ask any woman, and they will tell you that they know what their bodies can and can't do. So how could she conceive a child in a body this old that had always been barren? But she had to have had faith in this concept at some point. Why? Well, free will. Abraham could have had all the faith in the world, and she wouldn't have conceived. His faith couldn't make her receive something from God. Your faith can't make someone else receive something from God. Your faith can't save anyone else. Your faith won't heal anyone else. Your faith won't keep someone from making a mistake. Their faith must work, even if mustard seeds work. But they have to have it. They have to use it. Sarah could never have conceived unless she believed. So she must have. Hebrews 11, 11 to 12 says, By faith, even Sarah herself received power to conceive, and she bore a child when she was past age, since she counted him faithful who had promised. Therefore, as many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as innumerable as the sand which is by the seashore, were fathered by one man, and him as good as dead. Sarah trusted. Sarah chose to have faith. And she had her impossible son. It was her believing the Lord's words to and about her. Now it's interesting to me that between laughing at the idea of her having a child and her having a child, we only have one incident recorded. And that's their trip down south in Genesis 20. This time period is the only time she had to shift from this idea is ridiculous to this idea could be. It was an Abraham situation and not one of faith. Abraham was, well, he was human and he had his own issues. Fear was one of them. Lying was another. Technical lying at that. Twice when going into other lands, he feared he would be killed so people could take Sarah for themselves. So he instructed her to tell people that they were siblings. Technically correct, since they shared a father, but not mothers. And he told her to do it specifically twice. He was kicked out of Egypt because of it the first time. Now in both cases, the rulers of the country saw Sarah, desired Sarah, learned she was a sister without a parent attachment and took her for their own into their homes. And Abraham did nothing. There is no record he called out to God to save the situation. Although there's also no record that he didn't. So Genesis 20 is the second time this had happened. It happened in the court of Abimelech. Although Abimelech desired Sarah and had taken her into his house, he had not done anything with her yet. When the Lord appears to him in a dream to tell him to return Sarah to her husband, he protests that he is innocent of wrongdoing and God agrees. Not only does God agree, but God says that he kept Abimelech from sinning. Now we know the law of dominion. We know that when it comes to humanity and the affairs of humanity, God has in his sovereignty limited himself. We need to choose him and we need to give him permission to interact or intervene in any given situation. Again, the way he wants, when he wants, and how he wants. We don't get to make God do anything. We just give him permission to do what he already wants to do. So here in Genesis 20, God clearly intervenes. God clearly, by his own words, acted. So who gave him permission? It had to have been Sarah. Abraham was going with the flow and staying under the radar. His words in verses 11 to 13 show he was still scared. He was still weaseling about. He wasn't walking in authority or power in this situation. Abraham had instructed Sarah to always claim she was his sister, which technically she was, again, since they shared a father but not a mother, in order to keep his life out of danger wherever they went. That was the goal here. He believed that because she was beautiful, people would kill him to be able to claim her. We have a record that she went along with Abraham's instructions more than once. She was obedient. Now say what you will about her. Sarah was not shy about talking to Abraham. She had some full and volatile conversations with him. She was not a wallflower. So why did she agree with this? Why let herself be put into danger of having to bed these people, these kings? Hebrews 11.11 tells us she had faith. When she was taken into Abimelech's household, she must have cried out to God because God came and actively intervened on her behalf. She gave God permission and God acted. Sarah had faith. Now once Sarah got herself and her limited natural thinking out of the way, Sarah could choose to believe God. Sarah is the same as we are. Once we get ourselves out of the way, we can choose to believe God. The danger of being taken as another man's mate, the repercussions of a bad decision so your mate is getting uppity, and the reality of being well past childbearing and menopause and still having a child. Big issues. Big faith. Sarah must have thought about everything God had said to them over all the years that Abraham and Sarah had been following God. And Sarah believed. She began to believe. She had no reason not to believe. And she had every reason to be terrified about some of it. But instead, she was obedient to God. She was submissive to her husband. And she placed all her trust that God would make everything okay. And he did. She was released from both kings' homes without being bedded. And she got a thousand pieces of silver given from Abimelech to prove that her honor was vindicated. Her maid left the picture. The other son, Ishmael, left the picture. And no one took her son's inheritance. And yes, she birthed the promised son. She trusted that God would take care of her. There were bumps along her road of faith. But she got there. She trusted. God faithfully responded. If you will have faith, if you will believe, God will take care of you, too. Matthew 6.26 But you have to act on your belief. Submit to God and do what He tells you to. James 4.7 Unusual or normal, what God says goes. Joshua 1.9 The buck stops with Him. He will take full responsibility and He will take care of you. Deuteronomy 28.1-68 He promises in His word that He will. Philippians 4.19 tells us, My God will supply every need of yours according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. Have faith and trust Him. In Jesus. We are the seed of Abraham. And because of that, we are part of the Abrahamic covenant. We can walk in the same trust and faith that those two people developed. They got to the point where they walked without fear in their trust of the Lord. We can, too. We can choose to not be fearful of any of the terrors of life because our trust is in the Lord. Develop your faith. Read the word and strengthen it. Believe the word. Receive the word. And walk in it. Our daily affirmation of God's love is 1 Peter 2.9-10 It wasn't enough that God loved you. It wasn't enough that Jesus volunteered to come and die for you. It wasn't enough that you were welcomed into His kingdom as a son or daughter. No. God had to choose you. He needed to choose you in particular. That was all that could be. He chose you as a person, as a priest, and as a part of His holy nation. He called you out of darkness into light from ignorance to knowledge. He showed mercy to those who did not deserve mercy, each of us. We were nothing and no one before. And now, we are His people, His children, His priests, His holy nation, His chosen, His singled-out-since-before-time-was-time individual whom God not only loved but whom God picked. That was what was enough. You, chosen by God specifically. That's how special you are. That's how cherished you are. That's how wonderful you are. He chose you as you are. You. And you can be in Him. You. He loves you so very much. As we close, remember that you have worth. You are precious and valuable. Declare this. Today, God loves that I, now you, fill in the blank. Was it a meal you made? A smile you gave? Did you get out of bed? Read? Put on socks? There's no wrong answers here. There is no end to God's love and no end to the things about you that He loves each and every day. Pick one. And remember, the Lord loves you just because you're you. 1 John 4 9-10 tells us, By this, God's love was revealed in us, that God has sent His only-born Son into the world, that we might live through Him. And this is love. Not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. His perfect love turned away God's wrath because of sin. And it casts out our fear, too. See verses 18 and 19. We love because He first loved us. He just loves us. Can't get enough of us. And that is wonderful. See you next time.