Hope and Faith

"Against all hope Abraham in hope, believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, "So shall your offspring be." Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead-since he was about a hundred years old-and Sarah's womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had the power to do what he promised." - Romans 4:18-21

This is one of my favorite verses in the Bible. It starts by saying that "against all hope, in hope, Abraham believed." At a time where all hope could have and apart from God should have been lost, Abraham had hope and believed. Then it continues to say that "without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead"... I think this is really amazing. Abraham faced the facts about his situation, yet didn't weaken in his faith. I think sometimes we forget this. We usually do one of two things: We face the facts of our situation and allow ourselves to weaken in faith or we refuse to face the facts of our situation and masquerade it by calling it faith. For example, I have heard people announce, "I have cancer" and the next words out of the mouths of those around him are "Don't say that, keep speaking that you don't have cancer. If you say you don't have cancer, then you will be healed." Seriously? I think that's just dumb. The Bible doesn't tell us to be naive about our circumstances and pretend they don't exist. The Bible clearly tells us that we need to have faith despite our circumstances. The correct thing to do in a situation like the one above is not to pretend that the cancer doesn't exist, but to trust that God is in control and will do what he has promised to do. I use the cancer as an example because I hear people say stuff like this all the time, but I believe this is true of all of our circumstances. We can't pretend they don't exist. We need to face the facts of our circumstances but trust that God is powerful enough to see us through them. I think we sometimes try to pretend our problems don't exist because its difficult to have faith when we actually see our situation for what it is. However, when we can trust God just a little bit, our faith will be strengthened. I think that God wants us to see the impossibility of our situations and then watch Him make all things possible.