To Think About
by Norman Grubb

FAITH

"Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead"–Hebrews 11:19

There is a laboring faith and there is a resting faith. What Jesus called little faith, for instance, was the action of the disciples in the storm, when He lay asleep on a pillow in the at and they awoke Him, crying out: "Master, carest Thou not that we perish?" The disciples believed that He could save them but doubted if He wanted to! There was faith, but of a very watery consistency.

Great faith was what Jesus called the attitude of the centurion, for he not only believed that Christ’s word was with saving power, but that He would speak if asked to. He believed Christ could and would. But perfect faith is the description given of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac. The it is seen that when God told Abraham to go and offer his only son as a burnt–offering upon one of the mountains of Moriah, Abraham obeyed. It is plain that he had full intention of carrying out God’s word to the letter, for he not only bound his son and laid him on the altar, but also raised the knife to plunge it in him; and not till then, in the last split second, did God withhold his hand.

And the comment in Hebrews 11 is that so sure was he of God’s promise of seed through Isaac that he knew if he slew him at God’s word God would raise him up again. In other words, the faith of Abraham always had his son and never let him go. God not only could and would, but could and would and had. It was all settled before he started out. He and the lad would come back.

–From The Law of Faith