Author: Christine Wyrtzen

By faith Joseph, as he was nearing the end of his life, mentioned the exodus of the Israelites and gave instructions concerning his bones.  Hebrews 11:22

Joseph never forgot the stories of his great grandfather.  They had been passed down to him at the feet of his father, Jacob.  Though rejected and sent into slavery, and then living most of his life in Egypt, he wasn’t fooled about God’s promise about the promised land.  Though the Israelites were enjoying prosperity, he still was not tricked into thinking this would be their permanent home.  He could foresee the exodus of his people years down the road.  Not because he foresaw their captivity but because he knew they were headed for the land God had shown Abraham.

Joseph envisioning it is impressive enough but then put legs to his faith by making plans about his own death and burial.  He made no ‘just in case’ caveats that went like this ~ “I’d like to be buried with my people if they leave his place but if they don’t, here’s what I want done with my bones in Egypt.”  No, he just made plans for his bones after leaving with the people ~ so sure was he of the exodus ~ so sure was he of the word of his God. This is the reason he makes it into the hall of faith.

When I begin to distrust God’s promises, I will jump to make alternate plans in case God doesn’t come through.  I conceive an Ishmael instead of waiting for my Isaac.  Joseph had all kinds of seeming proof that God had changed his mind about the destiny of His people; the drought that nearly killed his clan, their migration to Egypt, their prosperity since they integrated into Egyptian culture, etc.  But Joseph wasn’t fooled.

Once God has made His will for me clear, I should never have a backup plan just in case.  How suspicious is that!  Either I trust or I don’t.  Either God is faithful or He is not.  I make plans to enter God’s open door and nothing should deter my footsteps.

Don’t let me mistake Your roundabout path for a permanent detour.  Amen

 

By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to their future. By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of Joseph’s sons, and worshiped as he leaned on the top of his staff.  Hebrews 11:20-21

 Jacob and his mother tricked Isaac into blessing him instead of Esau, the firstborn and rightful heir to his father’s blessing.  After Isaac learned what he had done, though betrayed, he trusted the providence of God that the 2^nd born was to be the chosen all along to carry on the promised line. Soon after this momentary faith however, angst, strife, deceit, and a lack of spiritual rest in the eternal purposes of God ruled his life.

So why is he in the hall of faith?  Because he finally matured and ended well.  Though much of his life was messy, he acted out in faith as an old man.  When he met Joseph’s sons, his grandchildren whom he’d never seen, he blessed the 2^nd born instead of the 1^st born.  When asked about it, he said he trusted in God’s revealed intentions with regard to birth order.  I love the picture this scripture paints of Jacob leaning on his staff; resting and trusting the promises of God that had finally settled in his heart.

Jacob never saw the promises of God fulfilled on earth.  Nor did his father and grandfather.  Their faith is counted to them as righteousness because they lived with an eye on eternity.  Their faith went beyond the comforts of here and now.  Their trust wasn’t short sighted – counting on God to deliver in their lifetime.

This is where I get tripped up.  I’m often asked, “Do you have the faith to believe that God can answer this or that prayer?”  I say yes, but with my ‘yes’ comes the assumption that it will happen here on earth and I will live to see it in the next 5 years.  I’m realizing that I’m simply wrong.  The majority of our biblical heroes lived with their eyes on the hereafter, rarely assuming that the promises of Yahweh would come to fruition in their lifetime.  I place too few of my hopes in the eternal realm.  I want perfection now and find it difficult to live contentedly while waiting for everything to be in godly order.

I examine myself today and ask some needed questions.  Do I trust God with the timetable of my life?  Do I believe His promises are real if I don’t see them happen here?  Is my joy and confidence really mature or am I childlike in wanting it now?  I must seek first the kingdom of God and keep my eyes fixed on eternity.  Deferred hope.  Faith that reaches with long arms.

On this day, I relinquish all of my short-sighted expectations.  Amen

By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac.  He received the promises and he was offering his unique son, the one it had been said about, your seed will be traced through Isaac.  He considered God to be able even to raise someone from the dead, and as an illustration, he received him back.  Hebrews 11:17-19

God’s predictions and promises will, at some time in my life, appear to have been snuffed out by present circumstances. This was the position in which Abraham found himself.

• God promised him a son in his old age.
• That son would be the seed through which a nation would be born.
• But then God told him to sacrifice his son.
• Crisis ~ A nation can’t be born through a deceased boy of 17 who has never fathered a child.

What was Abraham to think next?  God would either break His promise – which was an impossibility since God was true and holy.  Or, God would have to resurrect Isaac after death.  But since there were no recorded resurrections up until that point, the notion was original and outlandish with Abraham. Which would you believe?  Which would I have believed when both seemed impossible?

We will each experience many times in our lives when our faith reaches a crisis point.  Sometimes, it can be over the same issue as we see it ebb and flow from ‘unlikely’ to ‘somewhat promising.’  I am struggling with such a thing this morning.  The fix is a review of God’s history, God’s power, and the sustaining effect of living in the Word which lives and abides forever.

Satan is the faith-killer.  May he not succeed as we hold up our hands yet again for God’s peace and promises to come in like a flood.

By Your grace, and with Your angels if needed, don’t let me put my hands down. Amen

Therefore from one man—in fact, from one as good as dead—came offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as innumerable as the grains of sand by the seashore. Hebrews 11:12

From one as good as dead ~ came a nation.  Who can bring that about except God!

No one likes to hear the words, “Your chances are slim.”  Or worse yet, “There is no chance for success.”  The latter is certainly what would have been said regarding Abraham and Sarah’s desire to conceive a child in their old age.  The window of time for such a possibility was long past.

What is it you have given up on today?  Your hopelessness is based on the logical evidence sitting in front of you.  It might be too late, too expensive, or too hopeless considering the people involved.  There are many more reasons than these for seeming impossibilities.  But God ~

Do you know for certain that God is going to touch what is nearly dead to bring about a miracle?  Probably not – unless He has appeared to you somehow to declare it.  But that does not mean that you and I should hang our head and live in despair that what we’ve prayed for is an absolute impossibility.  As long as we live and breathe, God can do anything.  And if we consider God and see with eyes of faith, that produces joy and expectancy, not mourning and resignation.  While I don’t have ~ I can still sing with hope.

I laugh like a child at Christmas at the possibilities within the realm of Your power.  Amen

She [Sarah] considered that the One who had promised was faithful. Hebrews 11:11b

Sarah, facing impossible probabilities for childbearing, stopped to consider the One who had made her the promise of a child.  That’s a good and needed practice for any of us who wilt with doubt when we see no evidence of God’s promises being fulfilled.

What does it mean to consider God?  I consider Him like I might consider anyone who gives me their word about something important.  I ask questions.  “How trustworthy have then been in the past?  Have they ever broken their word?  Do they have character traits that would lead me to doubt their promises?  How have they been intentional to love me well in the past?”

When it comes to my spiritual life, this exercise is imperative where God and I are concerned.  He makes promises that aren’t always realized immediately.  In fact, most are not.  They require faith.  So, I stop to consider and then I remember his track record.  I read other’s accounts of His trustworthiness.  I ask older saints if God has ever broken His word.  I review His character traits and ask myself if someone like Him should be trusted 100% of the time.  And finally, I review how He showed His love for me on a hill outside Jerusalem.  He gave what was most expensive to make me His ~ the life of His perfect Son.

I’m convinced that sometimes faith is weak because we simply don’t know enough about God.  Imagine if the angel had come, not to Mary, but to some other young teenage girl who did not know God at all.  Would the Magnificat ever have come from her lips?  She would have had nothing to say of much theological magnitude; no theology was tucked away from learning and experience.

If I’m weak in faith, shaky on promises, the fix is a daily IV drip of Living Water.  Cumulatively, the effect is huge.  A mind washed with the water of the Word does not even think of doubting God.  It has been transformed into an entity shaped by divine power.  It, by default through years of training and submission, breathes faith.

I consider You where faith is weak and the evidence for trust is ironclad.  Amen

By faith even Sarah herself, when she was unable to have children, received power to conceive offspring, even though she was past the age, since she considered that the One who had promised was faithful.  Hebrews 11:11

Our sinful nature encourages us to be unkind and judgmental.  I can be that toward Sarah.  I’ve wondered over the years why she was in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews.  Was she really a giant of the faith?  When God told Abraham, within earshot of his wife, that she would conceive at 90 years of age, she laughed to herself and then denied that she did it.  Not only that, but after ten years of waiting for God to fulfill His promise, she took matters into her own hands and helped God out by having Abraham sleep with her maid.  Ishmael was the result.  So how can God see her as a woman of faith?

Just the way he sees me, and sees you, sin, then obey, sin, then obey.  Does he see our less than sterling moments?  Yes.  Does he hear our spoken doubts, even cynical distrust that we mutter under our breath?  Yes.  Do we take matters into our own hands to shorten the time in God’s waiting room in order to ease our unbelief?  Yes.  Yet, God does not judge us in the end by our moments of weakness.  What matters is how we viewed our sin and whether we repented to make course corrections.  His mercies are new every morning.

Sarah did laugh again – but this time, at the birth of Isaac and in celebration of God’s power.  This last laughter was one of joy that God had done the miraculous for her.  She went public with it too, erasing any notion that her distrust of God had become permanent and turned her into a sour skeptic.  She was no curmudgeon.  She laughed like a child over God’s goodness.

None of us want to be judged by our worst moments.  None of us should judge Sarah because of a few unattractive moments of faithlessness.  God doesn’t.  When He reviewed her life, He saw faith.  So much so, that among all those in biblical history who exemplified faith in astounding ways, Sarah was divinely chosen to be remembered in this lineup of heroes.

Are you wincing over my past mistakes?  Have you defined me by my sin?  I know better.  If I’ve repented, my sins are behind your back, out of sight.  Let me hear your joyful laughter over my life.  Amen

By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed and went out to a place he was going to receive as an inheritance. He went out, not knowing where he was going.  By faith he stayed as a foreigner in the land of promise, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, coheirs of the same promise.  Hebrews 11:8

Oh, what faith it took for Abraham to leave the land of Ur to follow God.  Oh, what faith it took for him to embrace Yahweh and forsake the gods of his family.  Daily, what faith it took to sojourn through foreign territory with all the resistance he encountered.  And, what faith it took to believe that he would father a son in his old age.  All of these were steep tests. 

But the greatest, at least to me, was that when he reached the land of promise and it was already inhabited by other people, he stayed to live as a foreigner. He still believed God even though he adjusted to the fact that his time of tent dwelling was not over.  He had to be sick of it.  He’d done it throughout his long journey.  He’d remained true to God and kept himself from calling anyplace home.  He’d kept his family nomadic so that when God spoke, they could move on to their stopping place.  Did he promise his family that when they reached the land God promised, they would leave their tents and build houses?  Probably so.   

It would be like God leading me to move to Finland, promising me a particular home once I moved, but after arriving there I discover that the house is occupied and not even for sale.  The people who live there have no intention of selling and they are hostile when I inquire. 

Was this not what happened to the children of Israel hundreds of years later when they reached the perimeter of the promised land under Joshua?  It was not vacant, just waiting for them.  The Canaanites had no intention of giving it up without a fight.  To make the faith test even greater, the inhabitants were giants and, humanly speaking, no match for God’s people. 

When God makes a promise, one I am to embrace by faith, I can count on the fact that there will be many realities within my field of vision that beg to disprove it.  The fulfillment is rarely instant.  Dave Wilkerson called it ‘the death of a vision’.  God calls, I listen, there are confirmations, but when I set out by faith, all evidence disappears that I am on the right path.  I begin to think I heard wrongly.  This is the journey of faith.  I’m not the first to fear that God led me astray. I won’t be the last to have the foundations of my faith shaken.  So what comprises a man or woman of faith?  It is not that they ever fail to ever doubt but whether or not they obey in spite of their trembling. 

In this chapter, Abraham is remembered because when he was called, he obeyed.  By faith, he stayed as a foreigner in the land of promise.  By faith, he continued to live in tents instead of fleeing in disbelief. 

Today, I steady the course when the enemy comes accusing Your character.  Amen

By faith he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.  Hebrews 11:7b

How was the world condemned through Noah’s faith?  Through his daily activity of building the ark.  Condemnation came on all those who watched, because ~

• God spoke to Noah about coming judgement.
• Noah believed and proved it by spending his life building the ark.
• Noah spoke to the people about the coming judgement.
• They did not believe, and it was their unbelief that condemned them.

So the faith of one can condemn the unbelief of the other.  People who walk in darkness can never say that they didn’t know. 

Oh, how two married people, a person of faith and an unbeliever, grate against one another! 

• The one with peace during a trial is trying to co-habit with the one who is undone by how much is wrong.
• The one with faith in the unseen God is trying to co-habit with the other’s logic and unbelief.
• The one who is angry about injustice is trying to co-habit with the one who trusts God to rule righteously.    
• The one who tries to take her children to church by herself is trying co-habit with the one who believes she is pushing religion down their throat.

By faith, Noah condemned the world.  His obedience alone did it.  And we experience the same sparks today when we live by faith.  The greater the unbelief, the more sparks there will be when we are in their company.  Jesus told us it would be this way.  “Men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil.”  John 3:19

How often have Your children been called judgmental?  And many never opened their mouths.  Give us the grace to obey, by faith, knowing such combustible results.  Amen

By faith Noah, after he was warned about what was not yet seen and motivated by godly fear, built an ark to deliver his family.  Hebrews 11:7

How many warnings does scripture give a believer about the fallout of sin?  So many!  ‘If you do this, then this will be the outcome.’  Yet, despite their familiarity to me, I have chosen to sin anyway.  It wasn’t that I didn’t believe God, it was just that I lacked godly fear and respect. 

Imagine how steep the curve of faith was for Noah about God’s warning of a coming flood.  All he knew was an evil world.  All he knew was that the evil he witnessed seemed to go unchecked.  All he knew was a world without rain.  All he knew was that God’s judgement was under a restraint.  To hear that a judgement would come on the whole earth had to be a stretch in and of itself.  Then to hear that it would come in the form of water and a flood ~ that was an even bigger stretch.  What motivated Noah to believe such a tall tale?  Godly fear. 

“Where is God in a world of suffering?” is a question posed to Christians all the time.  We struggle to answer and know that, for many, it is a rabbit trail to keep them from considering their need for a Savior.  But it is also the cry of those under the burden of a fallen world; those who wonder how they will make it one more day.  The delay of God’s intervention can erode godly fear of His power and kingship.

God’s inactivity didn’t erase the urgency of Noah’s labor so it is no wonder that he is in this lineup of faith!

How does this impact me?  First, I take my sin seriously because it does have, and will have, the outcomes about which God warns.  Secondly, I am not lulled into complacency about the promise of Jesus’ return and the need to tell the lost about their end.  Their future is their coming flood and I should never take for granted that I am already inside my Ark of safety, Jesus.  He longs for people to know, to believe, and to be saved.  My heart should beat like his. 

Just as it started raining one day in Noah’s time, the trumpet will sound and You will appear in the clouds.  Increase my godly fear that results in urgent obedience.  Amen

Now without faith it is impossible to please God, for the one who draws near to Him must believe that He exists and rewards those who seek Him.  Hebrews 1:6

Does this statement seem a bit redundant to you?  “The one who draws near to God must believe that He exists.”  I’ve been thinking about this for days now and asking God about this scripture. 

For me ~ this is how the Holy Spirit personalized it. 

With faith, which is believing that God will do the impossible, I move toward God and believe that He exists in my situation. 

Without faith, which is not believe that God will do the impossible, I move away from God and believing that God doesn’t exist, or is irrelevant, in my situation. 

The kindest thing we can ask each other is ~ “Where is God in this?”  It forces us to consider why we have gone to a place of despair and called something hopeless.  Is God no longer alive?  Is God suddenly someone who has broken His promises?  Does God no longer love me?  Will God no longer be a faithful Father?  Though we might never voice such admissions, lamenting utter despair voices them for us. 

What is it that sends you to a desperate place today?  Let me take your hands in mine, look into your face, and then ask you, “Where is God in this?”  It’s a loaded question even though a simple one.  It’s good for me to ask you to affirm, yet again, who God is and what He says He will do. 

Is this a guarantee that He will answer my prayer in just the way I’m praying He will answer?  The hard truth is ‘no’.  He might not – but then again, He might.  So where is my hope in this uncertainty?  That no matter the outcome, He promises many things regardless.  Companionship, peace in the uncertainty, joy in the sorrow, and complete restoration of what I’ve lost in the end.  Someday, you and I will get it ALL back and more.  Nothing is really lost – just deferred with interest. 

I stretch out my faith, I draw near, and I declare that ‘You are in this’.  Amen