how God views faith

Today in the One Year Bible, we read from Romans 4:1-12. And Paul is telling us about faith and how God responds to it.

It CAN be a little confusing, until you remember that God is outside of time. So God knows what we're going to do long before we do it. He knows how our lives will end. He knows if we will follow Him eventually or if we'll choose selfishness until the end. So when He responds to our baby faith, like He did with Abraham, He isn't just responding to that action, but to the whole lifetime of faith that He sees ahead of Abraham.

Same with you. He already knows if you'll be faithful and follow Him from now on, or if you will choose selfishness over Him at some point. Now, as humans, it's easy for us to mistake KNOWING what we'll do with CONTROLLING what we'll do. We do have a free choice in the matter. He just already knows what choice we're going to make.

The cool thing is you can ask. You can say, "God, please help me to be faithful till the end." And He'll answer that prayer. In fact, He already has.

God, thanks for being outside of time, and for responding to us inside of it.