Faith

A very good morning to you. I greet you in Jesus' precious name! It is Wednesday morning. It is the 17th of August 2022, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today. 

“And he believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.”
Genesis 15:6 

We are talking about Abraham, the man of faith.

“But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead?” 
James 2:20

Abraham was known as the friend of God. I don't think anybody would want a more wonderful title than that. Why? Because he believed in the Lord and the Lord accounted it to him for righteousness. He wasn't known as the friend of God because he was a good man. No! Do you know that he passed off his wife, Sarah, as his sister to save his own neck, twice! That's right. She was a very beautiful woman. Pharaoh wanted her. He said, “Don't tell him that I'm your husband because he’ll kill me.” That's not a good man. I don't think you'd do that for your wife, would you, sir? But Abraham believed God. Abraham was told by the Lord, “I want you to leave your farm, leave your home and take your family and your animals, take everyone and go to an unknown destiny.” He never hesitated. Do you know that he faithfully waited for one hundred years until God gave him a beautiful baby boy by the name of Isaac? 

“He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God”.
Romans 4:20 

That's not the end of the story. God gave him his little boy, Isaac, and when he grew into a fine young, strong teenager, God tested Abraham yet again. He said to Abraham, “I want him back. You need to offer him up as a sacrifice to Me on Mount Zion”. Abraham obeyed immediately.  

Do we want to be known as friends of God? We've got to start walking the talk. Faith is a verb. It's a doing word. It's not a noun. It's not like a table or a chair. It's an action word. When God tells us to do something, we need to do it. In 2008, we hired the biggest tent in the world. It took about three weeks to erect it here on this farm. My son came to me and said, “Dad, we need more money because we need more speakers”.

I said, “We don't have any money left.” He said, “Dad, they have told me that the sound from the speakers will only go to a certain row of chairs. After that, no one will hear anything. We have to have them.” Reluctantly I agreed. We ordered the extra speakers. We didn't have the money. The next day, we got a deposit in our account. A farmer in the Free State, hundreds and hundreds of kilometres away from us sold a flock of sheep and put the money in the bank - the exact amount! 

Have a wonderful day.
Jesus bless you and goodbye.