Belief is counted as Righteousness

Uni-verse 462/10,000 Genesis 15 v 6 Belief is counted as righteousness Uni-verse 462/10,000 Genesis 15 v 6 Belief is counted as righteousness Gen 15:6 And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness. It is our belief that enables us to be, to become and to have. Our beliefs influence and determine all our being, becoming and having. It is our belief in the Lord our God that enables us to be counted as righteous. It is righteousness by imputation. The Lord knows that if we are judged by our thoughts, words or actions, we will fall short of His standards. Instead, He adopted the standard of belief to judge whether each individual human being is righteous or non-righteous. Do we believe in His Word, His character, His promises, His provision of salvation and all other needs, His visions and prophecies? The very word “ belief” is comprised of two roots: the quintessential verb “ be” and “lief” that means kingdom. In life when we believe, we are qualified by His grace to be citizens of His kingdom. Is it easy for human beings to believe? No, it is not easy to believe as there are many distractors, ‘red herrings’ or misleading cues and circumstances that make it challenging to believe, to hold on to the belief, to let go of our inherent disbelief and to nurture our faith to grow. In some versions, the words “ He counted it to him” is translated as “ He credited it to him as righteousness.” This is a banking metaphor: when we believe the Word, a spiritual balance of righteousness is credited to our accounts. Though we are born in debt and end in death, He gives us a credit balance in accordance with the measure of our faith. Sometimes through our negative thinking, disobedience and lack of faith, we run the spiritual balance into negative but the Lord keeps topping up our accounts. How much does the Lord credit to our accounts? The visible declares the glory of the invisible. The Lord took the childless and heirless Abraham out of the tent that limited his outward and upward vision into the open and asked him to count the stars that are countless. With the then limited knowledge of astronomy, even Abraham knew that the stars could not be counted. The lesson in astronomy fully persuaded Abraham to believe that God is able to do whatever He had promised including a childless couple beyond the age of child-bearing a child, to raise a whole new nation Israel from that solitary child. His experience that far did not justify his belief but his faith justified his experience. The word ‘justify’ means to set right, to correct, to make straight. Similarly, we can neither predict nor count the magnitude or extent of the Lord’s grace, love and blessings in our lives. Our faith will justify our lives even though a lot of things may be crooked as of now. The Lord pointed out the stars to show Abraham the extent of His power not just to underline the infiniteness of His power to create, to manifest and to answer prayers of believing mankind but to tell us that we need to be stars shining in a dark universe. We need to be star performers in whichever orbit He has placed us today. We need to excel by contrast. Prateep V Philip