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Romans 4:21
Abraham was fully persuaded. He allowed the evidence God gave him to convince him to trust God. He added up the evidence and acted accordingly. This does not mean that Abraham never had doubts. The Bible makes it clear that he had doubts. The book of Genesis shows that he turned aside from the path now and again. In the case of producing a son, he tried to fulfill God's promise through Hagar, and God had to show him that his faith had broken down. Ishmael was not the promised seed. He had doubts creep into his mind at times, so he did not do things exactly right all the time. One thing we can learn from him—a significant reason God chose him as the father of the faithful—is that his overall trust in God never wavered. Like us, he erroneously processed the information, the evidence, he had from time to time, making him choose to go the wrong way. His emotions probably got in the way, as they do for us. But God patiently worked with him and turned him back to the right way. When Abraham went down to Egypt, everything turned out wrong. He should have never gone there. Nothing in God's Word, nor God Himself, instructed him to go there. Abraham chose to go on his own, and he almost lost his wife over it. God pulled him out of the fire and led him back to the right path. In the patriarch's experience, God is showing us to steer clear of Egypt, not descend into it as Abraham did. Even though we may have doubts occasionally, we can still trust God to return us to the right path because He will patiently work with us. When a doubt arises, sometimes it clarifies things because doubt implies that we are asking questions about whether our course of action is right. We should not think that we should never doubt because doubts will surface just because of the experiences we have had in the world. If we are patient and continue to trust God, resolving the doubt through godly thinking and experience will clarify matters. But a warning: Sometimes reaching the clarifying understanding will be painful because God may take us through an experience to help us realize we need to straighten out certain parts of our lives. We do not have God speaking to us directly as these men did on occasion, but we still have God's Word and calling. We can conclude that faith—godly faith—comes from the combination of God's Spirit working in our minds plus studying God's Word ("the excellency of the knowledge of Christ") plus related experience from the world. It is further strengthened by putting it to work as we move forward.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Faith (Part Three)
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