God-Sized Faith

Church today wow! Gotta love Sundays. My heart was very tender toward the Lord today, like it always should be I guess, but today was one of those services that from the first note of the first song I was struggling to hold it together. That's how the Lord prepares your heart though, He softens it and makes it tender toward Him so that what He has to say really penetrates. How loving and caring He is to his kids.

Anywhoo~today's message really stuck a chord with me. It focused on faith. The faith Abraham had, that God-sized faith, that one should expect from a God as big as ours. Pastor Kurt made some really good points today and one being that we tend to have "value" sized faith from God instead of "super-sized combo" faith, that Abraham showed. I think we underestimate faith because it really is too easy. We feel there has to be more required, that can't be enough. So the teaching today took us back to how the Jews felt Abraham was justified and made righteous because he was circumcised, and because He obeyed God then God called him righteous. But God called him righteous over a decade before He was circumcised because of his faith and nothing more. A very good reminder that were not scoring brownie points with God by reading extra today, or praying for 2 hours straight, it's our heart He's after and the true condition of our heart is shown in our response to obstacles. And that if we can respond with hope in spite of those obstacles that's true faith and that's what God is looking for in us. It was such a good reminder for me, especially with all the things going on in my life, the new baby coming, the house search, Chris' job loss and trying to make our current financial situation work with the money he's currently making. That got me thinking how in the message today we learned that God's promises almost always come with an obstacle and that I believe is how God refines our faith. If we got everything we were promised immediately with no obstacles it wouldn't take faith to believe anymore it would be an obligation that God would required to fulfill.

But today really made me understand what God-sized faith really is. Like when Abraham took Isaac to be a burnt offering because God asked him, knowing that God promised Abraham's legacy would come from Isaac, he didn't question it, he actually went assuming that God would raise Isaac from the dead, because God would never not fulfill a promise He has given. Wow! Talk about having hope in the midst of HUGE obstacles! That's awesome beyond belief!

My prayer today is that I will see my God and the star-breathing, galaxy-placing, earth-creating, dead-raising Creator and God that He really is. A God that is big enough to set the cosmos in place with the span of His hand and loving enough to come to us in a small humbling manger and compassionate enough to be in the dirt with a prostitute and save her. That's who my God is, that's who our God is! And He sure is an awesome God!!!

Blessings!