My faith isn’t too good when you put it up to Abraham’s, you’ll remember from your old Sunday School days, when God told him to leave his home, wife, children and animals  in Oz and go. He didn’t tell him where to go, just follow Him. That took great faith, wouldn’t you say? And there is this : One day Abraham was told to take his son up in the mountains and offer him up as a sacrifice. I am sure he was confused at first. He didn’t want to murder his son, but he went. He even had his son carry the sticks for the fire. Just as he was about to put his son on the fire, God called him not to do it! He even provided a ram to be used as the sacrifice! I look at my son. I am sure I would not kill him. I’d try to deal with him by giving Him my best animal or something. The fact that Abraham didn’t have to kill his son proves God’s great love for all people and Abraham had great faith.

Or how about David? He was going to kill that big giant, Goliath, with only one stone! Goliath was over nine feet tall, and he was broad too. The Bible didn’t give David’s measurements, it just said he was small and frail. He threw the stone and the giant fell. Of course he knew God was with him, but it still took great faith for that young boy, David!

I have many stories I could tell you, but I’ll just tell you a couple. Can you imagine a guy like Noah  building that huge boat in the desert? Everyone was laughing at him, but he kept on building because God had told him to. In the end it was worth it because the rains covered the earth. That took great faith too. Let’s not forget Joshua. He was told by God to take the children of Israel with him and walk around the city of Jericho seven times and on the seventh time the people should give a loud shout and the walls of the city would fall down. It did and they won that battle! That surely took wild faith, didn’t it?

But Jesus tells us that if we have the faith of a mustard seed, we can tell the mountain to fall down and it will. Now the mustard seed is very tiny but I guess we all have very little faith. We do know of people who can’t swim yet go out in the river and save someone they don’t even know. And we have known soldiers who have saved many lives. And we know a very loving God who gives us faith to do something we ordinarily wouldn’t think of doing. Let’s ask God for greater faith and leave the harder things to Him. Okay?

Love has become such a common word. One of the many television commercials tells us that a car is love. We just love that dress! We love your house. Oh, but I love your apple pie. You get the idea. We say we love everything, but how many times today have you said “I love you God” or even telling our child or our spouse we love them?

I’m thinking about this today when there seems to be so little love in our world. the signs people carry as they go about our cities say it all, they hate everything! There is no room for love. So I thought I’d tell you what love is. Maybe you even know 1 Corinthians chapter 13 very well, but please read each sentence slowly. The words will have so much feeling in them and will mean so much to you.

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophesy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.

And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;

Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. love never fails. (nasb)

Now, can you read that and look in your newspapers or watch on television and not see that many Americans are going in the wrong direction. Maybe we are too. We need to love the members of our family, our neighbors and even those people who are carrying signs and yelling profanities. Not only love them but pray for all of them as well.