Our forefather Abraham was no different from the majority of us.  He lived through good and bad times, all the while growing in his knowledge of God, just like we must.

He learned to trust God, as he learned to believe that what He said was truth.
Abraham had to develop his own faith walk with God. We can read about the mistakes he made, but we can also read how Abraham overcame doubt and unbelief in his life.

In Romans 4:18-21, it says that Abraham, being not weak in faith (any longer), he staggered not (being opposed to or separating himself from God’s promise), he became strong in his faith, and was now empowered, and at a place of rest to receive God’s promises.

He was now fully persuaded that God was entirely well able to accomplish this promise, and any others in his life. Abraham knew that he would become a father of many nations, even when, in the natural, he and Sarah’s bodies were well past the child bearing age.

Back to Romans 4:17, God called the things that were not as though they already were.

God has a plan for our lives, even from the foundation of time.  He can make anything we need or desire. Mark 11:24 tells us to believe we have received when we pray for it.

You see faith works through love. If we truly understand just how much God loves us, then we can truly hope or expect God to be true to us in His Word.

We show love, honor and respect to God when we, though our love for Him, fully expect, through faith, His promises or His assurances to meet our every needs. As we grow in living this way, we too, as father Abraham, will stagger not ever again in the promises of God for our lives.  TGM

When the church decided to job out  painting the outside of the church, a member and contractor Donald McAlpin put in the low bid and got the job. But when he went into town and priced the paint, he realized that he had bid too low to make any profit on the job. So rather than take the loss or suffer the embarrassment of having to tell the pastor that he miscalculated, instead of buying the 20 gallons of paint needed, he only bought 15, and then bought five gallons of turpentine to thin his paint way down.

On the very last day, with the job almost finished, Donald was way up on the scaffolding painting the steeple – when suddenly the sky became dark. There was a tremendous clap of thunder, the sky opened up and the downpour washed the thinned paint right off the church onto the scaffolding and surrounding ground causing Donald to slip and fall from scaffold to scaffold, causing the one upon which he landed to dump him into the graveyard, face-first into a deep puddle of mud and thinned paint.

Donald came up gasping, knowing that this was a warning from the Almighty. So he got to his knees and cried: “Oh, God! Forgive me! What should I do?” And from a clap of rolling thunder, came a mighty voice: “REPAINT! Ye Thinner! AND THIN NO MORE!”

So, let’s talk about repentance. There are those today who believe that since “grace” includes everything but the kitchen sink, that repentance is no longer necessary. But nothing could be further from the truth.

What most people have yet to figure out, is that grace is not even available without repentance and that repentance and God’s grace (as opposed to general favor) are only employed within a breached contractual relationship or what the Bible calls, a “sin.”

Repentance is like a legal U-turn. “Repenting” is by definition - a reversal - a turning around - a sincere desire to make whole again a contractual relationship which you have breached (sin). And upon your repentance within your contractual relationships with God - He has the option to offer you a grace clause by which you may re-enter that breached contract and make it good - as if it had never been breached.

The basis of every positive productive interaction between man and God (and between mankind) is a good faith contractual relationship of some type. God has the reputation of never breaching a contractual relationship. Mankind has the opposite reputation. Therefore, when man breaches a contractual relationship with God, the Bible says that it is God’s desire to make the contract whole again because He wants to build and develop rather than screen and exclude. But legally the responsibility of mending the breach and restoring wholeness is upon the one who caused the breach. So it was good news when Jesus brought with Him a grace clause which upon repentance could be applied to each and every breached contractual relationship,which allows the forgiven violator to re-enter the contract as if it had never been breached.

So, does this give you a license to sin? Well, in a way it does. However, you would be beyond foolish to throw God’s love for you back in His face, disrespect Him, His family name and the reputation of the entire God family, not to mention all that He has done for you.

Typically, when a person sins, the devil (usually indirectly) sows seeds of guilt and shame. This is followed by fear, which causes the sinner to (figuratively) run from the light into the darkness where some devil is waiting to beat the daylights out of them, all the while convincing them to stay until God is no longer angry. When all we really have to do when the guilt and shame comes, is to stop, turn around, go back to the light, repent and receive forgiveness (by faith) and move on like nothing happened. TGM

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