One of my favorite verses…
“Abraham believed in the God who brings the dead back to life and who creates new things out of nothing.” Romans 4: 17
As followers of Christ, we walk by faith not by sight. Abraham was fully persuaded (Romans 4: 21) that God was totally able to come through with everything He promised. Abraham knew that his body was as good as dead (Hebrews 11: 12). He had to see that he could do nothing with his own body – that was the only way he could know for sure that he had NO CONTROL – it was the only way…
In 2003 I remember listening to someone on the radio who said that God isn’t in a hurry to heal (I believe he was speaking about physical healing, but I think you can plug in any type of healing). He was saying that your healing won’t come until you are absolutely… positively sure… you know there is no other way your healing came from anything or anyone else other than Jesus. Those words are always before me in absolutely everything that occurs in my life. I’ve meditated on those words, and hidden them in my heart. I believe that is God’s way of saying, “If you never suffered, how would you know I could heal?” I often look back to Abraham. When he finally looked away from himself, is when God’s promise came to pass.
One thing I know for sure is that confidence in the flesh will never endure testing. Fair-weather faith is not faith at all. Most of us have hard heads and are strong-willed. There are many times God withholds things from us because He’s teaching us to learn that He’s in charge. We have to learn to trust Him, this is usually taught in the school of suffering or in the halls of adversity. And if we don’t grasp this truth, our faith will crash. But once we learn this, He loves to make His Word as real to us as in proportion to our faith!
“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” John 20: 29