By Susan Carson

   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!"
   Abraham 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; 24 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. —Romans 4:18-25 (The Message)

This was a radical thought for a people who had spent centuries following the law. Righteousness for a faithful Israelite was earned by works. Now, says Paul, it is given freely as a gift. And, even more astoundingly, it was given as a gift to their father Abraham.

God promised Abraham that he would be a father to many nations. Now that would be a big promise for anyone—but for Abraham it was bigger than big. It seemed to be the impossible. His wife Sarah was barren, he was about 100 years old, and they had no hope of bearing a child.

Yet, Abraham believed. He looked straight at the facts, accepted a paradox of impossibilities, and believed.

“He [Abraham] 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.”

Abraham took the plunge—that’s a great image. Picture yourself for a minute, standing on the edge of a cliff, high above sparkling blue waters. Face the most impossible thing in your life right now. Believe God’s promise for you—and dive in.

I'm diving in, I'm going deep, in over my head I want to be
Caught in the rush, lost in the flow, in over my head I want to go
The river's deep, the river's wide, the river's water is alive
So sink or swim, I'm diving in

— Dive by Steve Curtis Chapman (Speechless, 1999)

That’s the kind of faith that changes a life, that changes a city, that changes a world. Abraham’s faith made him a father of nations—a father for all of us who believe. Are you ready? Sink or swim, I’m diving in.

Prayer: Thank you, Father, that you are bigger than any impossibility in my life today. I choose to believe you, to take the plunge, and to trust you to do all you’ve promised. I desire to experience fully all you have for me in and through the impossibilities of my life. Today, I’m diving in.