Chapter 2-Believing the Unbelievable (Genesis 12)

"Now the Lord said to Abram, 'Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you'...So Abram went, as the Lord had told him." (Gen 12:1, 4a)

In our text, we see that God told Abram not only would his offspring possess a vast area of currently occupied land, but that through him, all families of the earth would be blessed. Upon arriving at Shechem, Abram built an altar to God and called upon His name, as other godly men in his line had done before him.

God called Abram, and he heeded the call without question, and without knowledge of how God would accomplish His purposes. But Abram had the promises of God upon which to cling. Of course, we see shortly thereafter that fear and doubt caused him to loosen his grip upon those promises, as so many of us have done. Nevertheless, how does Paul refer to Abraham in Galatians 3:9? The man of faith. Praise God that our very faith is a gift given to us by the Father, at the highest price of the death of His Son, and applied by the Holy Spirit, so that--though still imperfect and prone to wander off to our own 'Egypt'--we could be forgiven and become the righteousness of God.

How then should we respond to our own trials and tribulations, our fears and 'famines'? We should believe the unbelievable, thanking God that all of His promises find their 'Yes' in Christ. And because of the finished work of Christ and our union with Him, we can assuredly state with Paul, "So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal." (2 Cor 4:16-18)