No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God . . .
I’ve wanted to focus on really studying small passages of Scripture and God has blessed that desire. For the past couple days, there have been small verses or phrases that touch my soul in inexplicable ways. I trip over the sentence again and again, asking myself to tear apart each word and discover His truth in every inspired letter.
Romans 4:20 gripped my heart the other day. It isn’t the first time that this verse has impacted me, but this was the first time I really stopped to meditate on it. I wanted to share my thoughts and encourage you to meditate on small bits of Scripture.
1. Abraham didn’t give into wavering. No unbelief made him waver . . .
Wavering is a part-time job for me. Seriously—it’s so bad. My level of faith is so piddly when I really, really think about it.
So, I believe that God can save my soul from the death it deserves . . . but He can’t keep me safe? He can’t heal me? He can’t put the right president in the White House?
2. Abraham knew God’s promises. Concerning the promise of God . . .
In order to not waver, we need to know the God we trust and His trustworthy actions. This looks like
- Reading the stories of how He kept His promises to His people throughout the Bible
- Reflecting on ways He’s come through in our lives
So, we need to be aware of God’s past promises, how He delivered on that promise, and then apply that to our lives. If He came through for a murderer, a runaway, an outcast, and even lowly fishermen, why won’t He come through for us?
Get this: because God is perfect, He can’t lie. Because He can’t lie, you can hold Him to every. Single. Thing. That He says in the Bible. If He makes a promise, you can bet your life on it because that promise can never fail.
3. He was consistently growing. but he grew strong in his faith . . .
There’s no way Abraham was growing perfectly in leaps and bounds. I mean, the Bible records how he lied about who his sister was, actually showing a lack of trust in God and a strong desire to control his circumstances.
BUT God doesn’t look for perfect “line graphs.” Have you ever seen women record their weight? It fluctuates daily due to water intake and sodium and stress and a variety of other things. The charts end up going up and down and up and down BUT, if they stick with their regimen and put in the work, you’ll notice that it’s going in their desired direction if you zoom out and look at the overall progress.
Same thing here. Yes, we’ll fail sometimes. My boss from camp told us that the Christian life is like a ladder: you take it one rung at a time. Sometimes you go up, sometimes you go down, sometimes you fall a couple rungs down actually. But what matters is that you grab that next rung and, with God’s help and a humble spirit, get back at it.
4. He gave glory to God. as he gave glory to God . . .
My commentary says that giving God the glory means declaring who God is. That’s witnessing to friends, posting on social media with a verse, or calling a friend up to share something amazing God did for you today.
Declaring who God is means (going back to #2) we must know who God is. We can’t declare or define something we don’t even know.
5. He was fully convinced that God was able to do what He had promised.
Oh, to be able to say that I’m fully trusting God. That I take Him at His Word; that there is zero doubt in my heart.
Again, Abraham wasn’t perfect; he definitely had his times of doubting. I love that, in Hebrews, the Bible gives some of these people such “glow-ups.” I mean, Sarah had laughed because she thought that having a child at her age was impossible. These weren’t saints by our definition.
And yet God sees the good in us. He chooses to hear our pleas and forgive us our sins, remembering them no more. He wants to know what we’ll do for Him, who we’ll be for Him, where we’ll go for Him.
And yet for the inerrant Word of God to say that he was “fully convinced”? What an honor!
Honestly, this passage is so simple. If you’re struggling with trusting God, get like Abraham:
- End result: Never wavering (which takes practice and effort). To get there, we must
- know His promises and who He is, thereby
- growing strong in our faith and
- being able to give God the glory by declaring what we know about Him; this in turn
- grows us to be fully convinced that God can and will do what He has promised (basically point number one; look at this lovely cycle!!).
