In the Christian life, there are places of obedience we can never get over until we are absolutely confident that God has us and we are fully trusting ourselves to him. There are sacrifices we will never make, fields of obedience we’ll never walk in because we don’t fully trust him yet. So, how does God grow our faith in these moments?
By putting us through tests.
I was a teenager the first time I went rappelling off of Hanging Rock. One of my friends had suggested that instead of climbing up the rock face, we should rappel down it. He claimed he’d done it many times before, and at 16, I believed him.
Somehow, I volunteered to go first. The fact that my “expert” friend didn’t volunteer to go first should have been the first sign that something was amiss. But, certain types of wisdom come only with age, so we tied my belay rope around a tree, and I stood with my back toward the 75-foot drop, and my friend told me to lean back. I remember thinking, “Lean back?” In a flash, my ability to ascertain a person’s trustworthiness matured more in the space of a few seconds than it had in the entire 16 years of my life. I had put my life into the hands of a friend who consistently wrote checks with his mouth that his brain couldn’t cash.
I stood there for a few seconds, trying to work up my courage, and prayed to receive Jesus again (seriously). I even crossed myself just in case those guys were right. Then, I held my breath, closed my eyes, and leaned back.
What was surely no longer than a nanosecond felt like an eternity as I drifted backward into the open air, suspended between heaven and hell, waiting to see if the rope would catch. And when it did, there I stood, perpendicular to the rock face and parallel to the ground, held above a 75-foot death drop by a rope tied to a flimsy tree.
When the rope caught, my friend seemed pleasantly surprised that it had all worked. Then he said, “OK, now you gotta jump backward.” So, once again, calling forth every ounce of courage I could muster, I leapt from the rock with all my might … and I sprung maybe two inches. Another jump—six inches. Another—four feet. Then 10 feet. A few jumps later, I was standing on good ol’ terra firma. When I got to the bottom, I looked back up to the top and saw my best friend was next up. I watched as he tied himself into the belay system.
My best friend was better looking, more athletic, and more popular. Even from 75 feet below, I knew he was more scared of heights than I was, and when it came time to lean back, he didn’t budge. He stood there for a long while. Then he started to move. But he didn’t lean back like I had. Instead, he gingerly placed one foot down the rock face. Then another. Essentially, he began rock climbing down the mountain, using the rope as a safety net.
At one point, though, the rock face shifted. He wasn’t a good enough climber to scale it inverted. So, in order to keep going, he had to let go of the rock and fully commit to the rope. I watched him hesitate, try to find a foothold, and (I’m pretty sure) pray. After some more thought, he gave up and climbed to the top and walked the trail to the base.
In Christian life, we have two choices: climb or rappel down the mountain. The former never puts us in a spot to truly trust in God. The latter leans on him completely. And like my friend, the moment that forces the issue is usually a trial—some metaphorical shift of angle in the rock face. It’s when you get to that spot that you reveal whether you have real faith. Fortunately, those tests are also times when God can develop that faith in us.
That’s what happened to Abraham. God put Abraham through three tests, each one more difficult than the one before. First, God told Abraham to leave everything familiar and follow him to an undisclosed location. Next, God told Abraham that he and his wife Sarah would have a child in old age. And third, God told Abraham to offer up his only son, Isaac, as an offering.
Throughout Abraham’s story, he shows us that we gain the confidence to pass these tests from three places: a knowledge of God’s character, a remembrance of God’s past faithfulness, and a fixed gaze on the Lamb.
1. A Knowledge of God’s Character
Hebrews 11 tells us that Abraham knew who God was, and he knew what God was capable of. Abraham had experienced God’s ability to bring life to his sexually dead body and give him a miraculous son in his old age, and he’d seen God provide for him time and time again. Elsewhere in Scripture, Abraham is recorded as saying, “Surely God will provide for me here.” It’s like the words of the hymn, “Amazing Grace”: “The Lord has promised good to me; his word my hope secures; he will my shield and portion be, as long as life endures.”
Abraham had made up his mind: Wherever God is, that’s where I want to be. Because wherever he is, no matter how bad or dead it may seem, he’s the God of resurrection, and that’s his declared intention for me. And if I’m not near him, then no matter how good this place seems, it’s ultimately only death and destruction, a city without foundations.
Faith’s conviction is that God is good and seeking him is worth the effort. It starts with knowing who God is and how he feels about us. Martin Luther once said, “Faith is a living, bold trust in God's grace, so certain of God's favor that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it.”
2. A Remembrance of God’s Past Faithfulness
Abraham knew God wouldn’t let him down. Centuries later, when people came to take away Polycarp, one of the early church’s first martyrs, he was 86 years old. They gave him a chance to renounce Christ, yet he replied, “Eighty-six years, and he’s never once let me down; why would I turn my back on him now?” That’s essentially what Abraham said. Abraham could joyfully sing, “All my life you have been faithful; all my life you have been so, so good.”
I often say, “God’s past faithfulness in our lives is his pledge of future faithfulness toward us.” When we sit and truly examine our lives, we can trace God’s hand of faithfulness in our past and be reassured that he will be faithful in our future. 
3. A Fixed Gaze on the Lamb
I think of those last, final, defiant faith statements Abraham made as he walked up the mountain with Isaac: Don’t worry, Isaac, God will provide for himself a lamb; don’t worry, servants, we will both come back again. Abraham was convinced a resurrection was coming—he didn’t know how, but he knew that somehow a lamb would be involved in that restoration. And here we are now, with a much clearer picture of who that Lamb was and how he would provide that resurrection for us. It’s not just that God would provide for himself a lamb, but that God would provide himself as the lamb for us.
Jesus, the Lamb of God, unblemished, crawled up onto that altar voluntarily and took into himself the knife of God’s wrath so we could live. Jesus was actually killed and then actually resurrected from the dead so that we could be brought to new life and experience the power of that new life in all the dead parts of our lives.
Now we can be sure he loves us because he did not spare his Son, his only Son, the Son whom he loves so that we could be saved. Now we know that our God will supply all our needs according to his riches in Christ Jesus because he who did not spare his only Son will also freely give us all things. For we know whom we have believed, and we are persuaded that he is able to keep that against which we have committed to him against that day.
Photo Credit: SWN Design
Pastor J.D. completed his Ph.D. in Theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Chick-fil-A, serves as a Council member for The Gospel Coalition, and recently served as the 62nd president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Pastor J.D. and his wife Veronica are raising four awesome kids.
"Editor's Note: Pastor JD Greear's "Ask the Pastor" column regularly appears at Christianity.com, providing biblical, relatable, and reliable answers to your everyday questions about faith and life. Email him your questions at [email protected]."
