“Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations.” Romans 4:18
Recently, in Sunday School, we were thinking about Abraham and just recently I was reading about him again in Romans. I love the way the Message Bible puts the following verses. “We call Abraham ‘father’ not because he got God’s attention by living like a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody. … When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn’t do but on what God said he would do” (Romans 4:13 & 18).
In the world, there are all sorts of programs designed to help people to do well at a job interview and learn how to sell themselves to a future employer. Employers pick people based on their skill, intelligence and how well they present themselves. But God doesn’t operate under the world’s system. He delights to pick nobodies and make them into his very own people. “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God” (1 Peter 2:9).
We know that Abraham had moments of doubt and indiscretion earlier in his life but in the end, it was said of him, “he believed anyway”. “He faced the fact that his body was as good as dead – since he was about one hundred years old – and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise” (Romans 4:19-20).
May it be also said of us that “we believed anyway” when circumstances appear hopeless, when doubt threatens to overtake us, and when temptations come rolling in.
