Romans 4 - Passage Lookup - The Message - BibleGateway.com

Romans 4 - Passage Lookup - The Message - BibleGateway.com: "We call Abraham 'father' not because he got God's attention by living like a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody. Isn't that what we've always read in Scripture, God saying to Abraham, 'I set you up as father of many peoples'? Abraham was first named 'father' and then became a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing. When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn't do but on what God said he would do. And so he was made father of a multitude of peoples. God himself said to him, 'You're going to have a big family, Abraham!'
19-25Abraham didn't focus on his own impotence and say, 'It's hopeless. This hundred-year-old body could never father a child.' Nor did he survey Sarah's decades of infertility and give up. He didn't tiptoe around God's promise asking cautiously skeptical questions. He plunged into the promise and came up strong, ready for God, sure that God would make good on what he had said. That's why it is said, 'Abraham was declared fit before God by trusting God to set him right.' But it's not just Abraham; it's also us! The same thing gets said about us when we embrace and believe the One who brought Jesus to life when the conditions were equally hopeless. The sacrificed Jesus made us fit for God, set us right with God."

Ok, so, you can't copy and paste stuff from Biblegateway anymore, and you have to do it this way. Thus, the entire part of the passage I want was "too big" or something, so I had to cut it down to this. Anyway, not important.

I am very interested in what I have bolded and italicized up there. It speaks very much to FCC. Everybody knows we've got some issues- financial, mixed in with some spiritual. We are in this spiritual leap forward, I believe. What a place to be in when we are financially freaked out.

Jesus has promised to be with us each step of the way. In Jeremiah 29:11, that verse that I keep on the tip of my tongue, God promised the Israelites: "I KNOW the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you, and NOT to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." We hear that, we see it in writing, and we hold it in our heads. But what should we do?

What did Abraham do? He trusted, and he MOVED. Don't get me wrong, it is right to think about our finances and see what we can do to alleviate that issue. However, we cannot stand around this place, stunned. We can't focus on something that God has said HE has control of. The work the Lord has planned for us in advance, it doesn't get put on hold simply because we are having financial issues. We must go on.

So, we need to all make a choice- a crazy choice for some of you, because concentrating on finances when they are in trouble seems like the logical, smart thing to do. But we can't tiptoe around God and what He is doing with us. We can't say, "Hold up, God, let's get this straightened out before we go on to the next thing..." We must go about our business of blessing, and trust God that He will provide what we need. FCC is a strong church- not because our building is pretty and taken care of well. That is a product of our strength. We are strong because the Lord has made us strong, we, the people of this church. Our spirits reach out for God, and His hand is upon us. The more we seek Him, trust Him, and obey what we believe He is asking us to do- we will see Him take care of these struggles. In His way. In His time.

How is your faith? Are you ready to do as God is asking us, and trust that He will provide for us in the way we need Him to? If you believe that- if you dare to trust in our Lord- plunge into His promise! Let us go out and bless! Let us trust that God will put things right- in His way. In His time.