God is Able to Perform His Promises

“And being not weak in faith he considered not his own body now dead when he was about a hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah’s womb. being fully persuaded that What He had promised, He was able also to perform”.(Rom 4:19,21).

At each appearance, God revealed to Abraham something of the tenfold secret of divine friendship a step by step revelation. If you have steps in your home you will not jump over them, but climb them step by step. So it was with Abraham. God appeared twice to him in Genesis 12, then in chapters 13,14 and 15. chapter 17 records the sixth time He appeared to Abraham when he was 99 years old and past the age when a man could except a son. Both he and his wife had become like dry trees.

At that time he had to believe that through he was old and his wife equally old, God was able to fulfill his promise ( Romans 4:19-24). It was only at this time Abraham got real faith, and for this kind of faith in him, God had been waiting for 25 years. When God first appeared to him he had faith, but it was not a strong faith, (Heb 11:8). He obeyed God and straightaway left his country, kith and kin, and went away to a strange and new country.

Even though it required much sacrifice and faith to obey like this, God was not satisfied. Step by step He was preparing Abraham for a stronger faith till he and his wife had become too old for child-bearing. Until God put new life into their bodies they could not have a child. That was the great secret of faith through which they understood something of the power of resurrection; and by that same power, we can also conquer our temptations.

___By Vivek Anand