BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

While they were scoffing, however, Abraham was believing. He was refusing to be moved by impossibilities. As Romans 4:19-21 says: “Being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb: He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; and being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform.” When it came to living by faith in God’s WORD, Abraham was as rugged and determined as they come. Like those guys I used to play football with, he was all-in. One hundred percent committed to believing God. The Same Kind of Faith God Uses You and I, as born-again believers, can have the same kind of attitude! When we see in God’s WORD that by the stripes of Jesus we were healed, we can choose to consider not the symptoms of sickness in our bodies. We can jump up in faith and say, “Yes, Sir! I am the healed of The LORD!” When we see that our covenant with God declares that His BLESSING makes us rich and adds no sorrow to it, we can say, “Yes, amen! I am BLESSED and I am rich!” We can believe God 100%, regardless of what our bank accounts or other people might say. “Yeah, but Brother Copeland, I just don’t have that kind of faith.” The Bible says you do. It refers to all of us, who believe in Jesus, as those who “walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham” (Romans 4:12). Exactly what kind of faith did Abraham have? He had the same kind God uses! No human being ever had that kind of faith until Abraham came along. But he caught hold of it and once he did, he used it to the max. He actually believed God to the point that he perpetuated his seed to a thousand generations. He put so much faith in his covenant with God that there was no way God could ever annul that covenant or call it off. As He said to Abraham in Genesis 22:16-18: “By myself have I sworn…for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son: that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.” Notice that according to those verses, Abraham’s faith in God was so strong he didn’t withhold from Him even his own son. He went up the mountain and put Isaac on the altar of sacrifice simply because God asked him to. As a result, he obligated God, as his covenant partner, to do the same. He put God in the position where He was bound by covenant to sacrifice His own Son for the sake of all mankind. Up until Abraham, God hadn’t found that kind of faith on the earth. He’d found some people who would believe Him for financial BLESSINGS or for healing. But no one had ever believed God to raise someone from the dead—and when Abraham offered Isaac, that’s exactly what he was believing God would do. Abraham wasn’t brokenhearted and crying the day he took Isaac to the altar, like the silly Hollywood movies portray him. He had the fire of faith flashing in his eyes. He was “accounting that God was able to raise [Isaac] up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure” (Hebrews 11:19). 6 : BVOV

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