Faith of Abraham Part I

Control feels like safety until it turns into anxiety you can’t switch off. We start with Abraham because his life shows what faith really looks like when God calls you forward but refuses to hand you the full itinerary. Abraham obeys the call, steps into the unknown, and learns that the promise of God can carry more weight than the pressure of circumstances.

We also get practical about discernment and spiritual leadership. Yes, we follow Jesus first, and we can learn from pastors and leaders who genuinely imitate Christ, but we never outsource our responsibility to the Word of God. We talk about why it matters to write down the Scriptures you hear, look them up for yourself, and keep your faith anchored in what the Bible actually says, not what you hope it says.

From there, we go straight to the heart level issues: the need to be in control, the way emotions can overwhelm us, and why surrender is not weakness but worship. Abraham’s journey becomes a picture of relationship, learning to hear God, and letting trust grow step by step. We connect it to Romans 4 and Romans 5:1, showing how Abraham points forward to the New Covenant reality of being justified by faith in Jesus, not by religious effort. We finish with “hope against hope”, because hope builds faith when life looks impossible, and we tee up a part two for what people often raise about Abraham’s failures.

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Good morning, good afternoon, wherever you are in the world - Welcome to Grapevine Ministries.

Transcript

Tech Hiccups And A Quick Start

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Don't know what it is this morning, but we seem to be having a few technical issues again. Maybe I'm just getting a little old. Okay, we are going on with uh our faith hall, and we're going in to move into the faith of Abraham. Now, if you want to talk about Abraham, it's very, very complex and it's very detailed, and we could go on forever and a day, but I want to look at the basic overlying principles,

Why Abraham Still Matters

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I suppose you could call it, is about Abraham being the father of many nations and basically the father of faith, I suppose, really put it that way. Now, Christian life is a life that follows this sort of principle. When Jesus was on the earth, he said, If anyone would come to me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. That's uh Hebrews 16 24. Now, Christians are those that are followers of Christ. You know, basically Christian, the word Christ is uh Jesus, and the following aspect of that is we are followers of Jesus Christ or followers just of Christ. Now we've learnt from him who followed the example that he set, but he's not the only Christ that we follow. We follow other godly leaders who lead us in the way of Christ, as Paul said, be imitators of me as I am of Christ, and that's 1 Corinthians uh 11 1. Uh Maria would absolutely love this because uh it's all the ones. We've spoken about that before, we're not going to get distracted. I believe that this also applies today with local pastors and spiritual leaders that you know and trust. Remember, your leaders or even me, uh, those that who spoke to you of the word of God, consider the outcome of their way of life and the how they imitate their faith. Hebrews 13 7. A Christian life is a life of following. We follow Jesus, we follow after those who are following him, but it's not only the New Testament that gives us worthy examples to follow. We have examples in the Old Testament as well, and one prominent example of that is the life of

Following Jesus And Faithful Leaders

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Abraham. Now, the reason I say that is because one of the things I found as a young Christian is that you don't want to fall in the trap. Now, I've got to be careful here, I don't want to offend anybody, but if you don't want to fall into the trap of believing everything that is spoken from the pulpit, um I I did a teaching and a training many years ago with uh brother um Mark Barclay, and he did this thing called SMTI, Spiritual Ministry Training Institute, and it's really teaching uh us, the layman, so to speak, how to actually look at the church and who's in it, and to make sure that we don't put our pastors up on a pedestal because he should be following the word of God and he should be led by the Holy Spirit, but he's also following, you know, under the new covenant of Jesus Christ who died at the cross for us. So I don't want to get too bogged down in the finer details of the determining who we should be listening to. When all gets said and done, go back to the word of God. Brother Barclay used to say this over and over again. He says, Oh, don't listen to what I'm saying. Let's see what the word of God says about this. And he always referred back to the book, and we should do that always. Yes, uh, pastors from the pulpit will mention lots of scriptures, the same as I do. Uh, note them down, look them up for yourself and see if they fall into line with the teaching and if the scriptures are accurate. And please don't get into one of these new age Bibles because they remove stuff, change stuff, and we know that that's not of God, and that's perhaps for another time. Hebrews 11 8. Now, by faith, Abraham, when called to go to a place he later received as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know when he was going to

Test Teaching Against The Bible

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go. God asked Abraham to go on a journey with him, a journey that would lead him to his destiny. God promises Abraham he would make him into a great nation, make his name great, and bless all the people on the earth through him, and that is in Genesis 12, 2 to 3. But Abraham did not get to know where he was going, what he would experience, how he would get there, how long it would take, or what his life would be like when he arrived. Having nothing but the promise of God, Abraham stepped out in faith. Now, if we are searching to be in control, then we will live constantly in a battle with our anxiety and insecurity, where we'll either be overwhelmed by it or we try to avoid it. Other times, when you want to be in control because of your emotions, they can overwhelm you, and I think the solution is to get yourselves, including myself, and others, under control, but that is just putting faith in what I can do instead of what God can do. Now, uh let me say that again. Are we putting faith in what we can do, or are we putting faith in what God can do? Sometimes this is because uh with me in particular, my military background and my training, or as with my kids telling me I'm a bit of an OCD person, I think it's because most of the time my decisions affect others, not just me. And all of these may have good reasons and excuses in relation to that, but to be totally honest, often I want to be in control because emotions can overwhelm me, and I think the solution is to get myself or others under control, but that is just putting faith in what I can do instead of what God can do. One of the main aspects of faith is to make yourself available to God to pray through your anxiety and your insecurities so that you can let go of control and let God be in control. That was a really hard journey for me, and that took me a very, very long time to understand that. Now, now that we're under the new covenant, okay, we are very, very blessed because we have the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. Back in Abraham's day, he actually only had that knowing that God was speaking to him and leading him in a certain direction. But in saying that, you still have to actually look at your circumstances and decide how much control you are going to give over based on your circumstances. I mean, are you, you know, I know this because it happened with me. I was hearing from God and I didn't know God. God knew me before I knew him, and he was very persistent with me, but I learned to discern the difference between my own stinking thinking and hearing from the word of God. Once again, we're digressing, we're talking about Abraham, not about me. This was during um Abraham's journey, um, he had to forge a relationship with God, guaranteering, guaranteeing that Abraham would have the heart, character, and spirituality to appreciate and to hold on to his inheritance. The journey is the venue in which we discover and work out our differences with God. It's the time we become aware of our convictions that we need to develop. It will expose any lack of trust and help us clarify any wrong views of God. And all of these are very important experiences for developing a healthy relationship with God. If we learn to enjoy the journey, then we will learn to enjoy God step by step along the way. Now, the reason I say this is because uh when I was in the wheelchair the first time, it was very unfamiliar

Called To Go Without Knowing

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for me to hear from God because I didn't know what he sounded like. Now, sometimes I could tell you what God sounds like to me, but that's not what he's gonna sound like to you. And I found that my problem the first time around was purely in simply that I did not have a close personal relationship with God. Now I've been married 42 years to Maria, and I could actually just go out into the lounge room now and look at her, and I can to a very, very close, you know, proximity discern what's going on with her, whether she's upset, whether she's tired, whether she's lonely, whether she's frustrated, whether she's you know trying to you know bat her eyelids, all sorts of different varieties. These are her characteristics, these are her um her way of communicating with me without speaking, right? But other times you can speak and you're and and I'm not gonna get into um I'm not gonna get into a sermon about um body languages and love languages and all this sort of stuff, right? But the main thing here to take into consideration is that even when someone speaks, is it something they've heard from God, and you can know that by the way that they actually speak? You know, you can say, Oh, this person's heard from God, and this is what happened with Abraham and more prolifically with Noah, but that's next next week. The faith of Abraham is the ultimate biblical model to completely trust and have obedience if teachers it teaches us that true faith means stepping into an unknown based platform just on God alone, and when God promises you something, are you trusting Him and His timing when it may seem impossible, and are you surrendering to what is most precious to us, which is a relationship with the Father? Hebrews 11:8 said, By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, though he did not know when he was going to go and where he was going to go and when God would tell him to stop. God asked Abraham to go on a journey with him, a journey that would lead him to his destiny.

Control Breeds Anxiety And Insecurity

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God promised Abraham he would make him into a great nation, make his name great, and bless all the peoples on earth through him. And that was in Genesis 12, 2 to 3. But Abraham did not get to know where he was going, what he would experience, how he would get there, how long it would take, or what his life would look like when he arrived. Having nothing but the promise of God, Abraham stepped out in faith. Now, if you or me uh want to be in control, then we will live life constantly in a battle with our anxiety and our secure insecurities, where we'll either be overwhelmed or we'll try to avoid everything completely because it's all about me, myself, and I us, us, us. Now there's many, many times that I want to I want to be in control, okay? And I try to do that, but I've learned over the years to let go and live to God. See, the other thing to remember it was during the journey that Abraham forged his relationship with God. See, he knew God and was able to hear from God, but he did not have that lasting um relationship that he needed to be able to inherit his inheritance, and this is the big difference. He actually forged the relationship with God during the journey. You know, I I know uh this is just the way society is at the moment, but we want to know about everything now, now, now. Okay, where am I going? Uh what do I need to take with me? Uh, who am I going to meet along the way? Is there someone gonna be there to help me? Questions, questions, questions, but no, stepping out in faith when you know without a shadow of a doubt that you have heard from the father that you are to go on a journey, and then you will during that journey, you will build your relationship with the father so that as time goes on, it is easier to hear from him. Now, I know everybody loves a good story or a good journey story, seeing how the main character or the hero overcomes adversity against the odds and comes out the other side a different person. Now, I've put a few examples in here because I don't know what uh genre I'm speaking to, and I want to cover all bases. Some of them you'll know, some of them you won't, okay. Uh, like Lord of the Rings, everybody knows the characters in that, and they went on a journey. Indiana Jones, okay, everybody knows about that. Now, the Goonies, probably never even heard of them half of you people. Stand by me is a maybe, depending on your age, dynamics. Star Wars, everybody should know about Star Wars, but what about Lassie and Rin Tin Tin or Skippy? If you're into animals, okay? So I've literally covered everything. Okay, these are heroes, and they're on a journey, but who's being leading them there and what are they going to do along the way? But we know the story ends with them being the hero. This is what this is not about. This is about having a relationship with our Heavenly Father and going on a journey for him to reveal to you great things fenced in and hidden. See, on many occasions, I've shared some of our journey. Um, both myself and Maria have been on. So I'm not going down that path again. Just read the book. And if you don't know what the book I'm talking about, then send me a message and I'll let you know. But we, yes, we've written a book on our very first journey where we had to trust God, and I've spoken on it many a time, so we'll leave that alone. What we can learn about Abraham is that his focus was on God's power to fulfill his promise and not on the circumstances he was facing.

Hearing God Through Relationship

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Abraham knew that God was willing and able to keep every promise that he'd made to Abraham. Now I don't need to tell you this, but I will anyway. Every great journey begins with one single step. But the journey of faith begins with a step into the unknown. As we look closer at Abraham, he was a man designated in the scriptures as the father of all who believe. He did not possess a perfect life, but he possessed a perfect trust in an unwavering God. His story challenges us to examine our own hearts. When God speaks, do we look at our limitations or do we look at his infinite power? See, it's basically the same way as saying, is the cup half full or half empty? Are you an optimist or a pessimist? The only thing that is different in the object of our faith is simply that. See, Abraham never knew Jesus by name, and I doubt that he fully understood the need of sacrifice for sins, but what Abraham did know, he believed.

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And what was it that he knew that he believed?

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He had a direct promise of God to bless him and his offspring, and he believed, and God accounted it to him as righteousness. Now, see, that's the big difference right there, okay. Now, the object of our faith is not a direct promise from God to bless us and our offspring. The promise that God has given us is to believe in Jesus, the Messiah, to believe that he was sacrificed for our sins, to believe that he was raised for our justification, and we know that if we believe in Christ, it will count us, our faith, as righteousness. Now this becomes before any religious work or effort that we do. Paul made the point in Romans four ten that Abraham was accounted righteousness before he was circumcised. Paul made the point in Romans four thirteen that Abraham was accounted righteousness before the law was given to Israel. Because our justification before the Lord doesn't depend on circumcision or baptism or keeping the law or following some sort of rule. No, we are justified by faith alone. So when you really look at it from the big picture, we've got it easy in comparison to Abraham. In fact, that's the whole point of Romans chapter four. And if you look at Romans 5, 1, where we have a summary of the chapter, Paul writes, he writes this, therefore, since we have made, oh sorry, therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. See, in other words, Paul was saying that therefore, this is the conclusion that we must draw from Romans chapter 4, and from the life of Abraham, that we are justified by faith. Now I know this

Journey Stories Versus God’s Purpose

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podcast is about following the faith of Abraham, but we need to know the Old Testament and the New are constantly connected. It says the New Testament is a type and the shadow of the Old. Jesus came to fulfill the law, and then we were under a new covenant, which was him by the shedding of his blood. In saying that, let's look at Romans 4 18 and 2 to 25. Now this is the amplified. In hope, Abraham believed against hope that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, so shall our offspring be. He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead, since he was about a hundred years old, or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb, no unbelief made him waver concerning the promises of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was accounted to him as righteousness. But the words it was counted to him were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who was raised from the dead, Jesus our Lord, who delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. See, if you look at the life of Abraham, and then you look at the life of us, we've really got it a lot easier. And if you study the word in depth, you will see just how important your faith is. So I was talking to someone the other day, and they were uh talking about someone who had cancer, and um they had lost all hope, you know, and so they wanted me to speak to them about trying to regain that person's hope. And the only way to do that is you've got to understand hope builds faith, faith builds belief, and I've said that time and time again. But we also have to remember the promise in Genesis that God gave to Abraham. The Lord took him outside at night and told him to look up into the dark sky and to try and count the stars, and the Lord said, So shall your offspring be in Genesis 15 5. Now I know a lot of us can't go outside in the dark and look up because the lights of the city blind everything out, but if you're ever in the country on a

Justified By Faith Not Religious Effort

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picnic or something and find yourself in a paddock, just lay down and look up at the sky and see just the enormity of the stars that are in this darkened sky. Now we know this wouldn't be so difficult to believe, except that it was a bit of an on the side issue. Not giving too much away. I'm on the way to 70, and Rhea's on her side of 60s, and we could hardly think about being the father again and bringing someone else into the world at our age. Now, Abraham was nearly 30 years older than me, and when he was told that he was going to be the father of multitudes of nations in Genesis 17, 5, he was childless at the age of 99, and his wife Sarah was 90. Do we have a close friend of ours who I well I mean I call her my West Australian mum, but she's 95, right? And she's probably listening to my iPad, so hi Glennis, how you going? But I I don't think that I could imagine, or even she could imagine, deciding to have a child um at her age. Now, okay, a full disclosure, we know uh children suck can't simply be born from a person at the age of 90, but the Giddy's Book of Records holds the oldest mum who gave birth without artificial insemination to be 59. So that time has passed for all of us. Dawn Brooke was her name. She lives in the UK, and uh so she had one at fifty 59, no artificial insemination, right? Now, with artificial insemination, the record for someone to have a child is 66. Look it up yourself. Both of those records are amazing, but they are still a long way off of 90. And from that we know that the Bible statistics are true. It's not a misprint or anything like that. Abraham had every reason in the world to doubt the promise of God, and yet we read in verse eighteen that he believed in hope, he believed against hope. That is, when all natural hope seems lost, Abraham continues to believe. Now, it's not that Abraham refused to think about things, on the contrary, um, he thought about things, and he thought about them very hard. I mean, look at uh Romans uh 419, right? Uh

Hope Against Hope And Part Two

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he did not weaken in faith when he was considered by his own body, which was good as dead, since he was about a hundred years old, or when he considered the baroness of his wife Sarah. Now I think that's very important to consider. Now we're gonna do a second part to this because it's it I want to clarify a few things, and and the first thing is you know, I know what everybody's gonna say. Oh, yeah, but you know, hang on, Abraham did doubt his faith. I don't know why I all of a sudden got a girly voice then, uh, but I did. Um, but we know um that uh he uh slept with the maiden, but that's for part two. Talk to you soon. Bye for now.