Moving Faith

 

Faith That Moves, Not Just Means To

There is a real, weighty, spiritual difference between meaning to do something and actually doing it. In faith, that gap is not small. It is vast.

We often comfort ourselves with intention.
“I will trust God.”
“I will obey.”
“I will step out when the time is right.”

But Scripture does not measure faith by intention. It measures it by movement.

Belief Before Understanding

When God called Abraham in Genesis 12, He did not give him a full explanation, a roadmap, or a timeline, just a command and a promise.

And Abraham went.

That alone confronts our modern mindset. We want clarity before obedience. Abraham obeyed before clarity came. His feet moved before his circumstances made sense.

He did not say he would go; he went.

Trusting the Promise Through Silence

In Genesis 15, God promises Abraham descendants as numerous as the stars. Yet time passes, years pass, and silence stretches. The visible reality contradicts the spoken promise.

This is where intention usually fades.

But Scripture says that Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness because he anchored himself in what God said, not in what he saw.

Abraham did not build his confidence on circumstances; he built it on the character of God. The stars were visible, the promise was spoken, yet the child was absent. Everything around him argued for delay. His body argued for limitation. Time argued for impossibility.

Yet he chose to place his trust in the Word, not in the evidence.

Faith is not optimism. Optimism looks to what might happen. Faith grasps what God has said, even when nothing around you supports it.

He anchored himself in the voice of God, not in the silence of his surroundings.

And that is why his belief held.

The Weakness of Human Intervention

Then comes Genesis 16, Hagar and Ishmael, a moment that exposes something deeply human.

Abraham still believed in the promise, yet he attempted to assist God’s plan through human reasoning. This is what happens when faith agrees yet struggles with surrender. We believe in God, yet we still try to manage outcomes.

This has been my struggle. Not at Abraham’s level, not with the same weight of obedience, but in the quiet, everyday places of my own life, I have believed God yet still found myself stepping in, trying to manage what He has already spoken, trying to help what never needed my help. And here is where the weight of that decision stretches far beyond a single moment in history.

God had already spoken. The promise was clear. The lineage was specified. Yet impatience, pressure, and visible delay created an opening for human intervention. What was birthed in that moment was not outside God’s awareness, but it was outside God’s instruction.

This is a sobering principle. When we intervene where God has spoken, we do not cancel the promise, but we often complicate the path.

The consequences of that intervention did not end in Genesis. They echoed through generations. Scripture records tension between the line of promise and the line born through human effort. What began as a way to delay became a source of long-standing conflict.

Not because God failed.
But because man refused to wait.

This is not merely historical; it is spiritual. It reveals how flesh tries to accelerate what only God can establish. When faith grows impatient, it produces substitutes. And those substitutes carry consequences.

The hostility towards the covenant line of Israel and the resistance to the cross cannot be understood purely through politics or history. At its root lies a spiritual tension tied to promise, inheritance, and covenant. What God ordained through promise, the flesh attempted to reproduce through effort.

Intention said, “God will do it.”
Control said, “Let me help God do it my way.”

And that tension did not just reside in Abraham’s tent; it resides in the human condition.

We still do it today.
God speaks, we agree.
God delays, we intervene.
God promises, we strategise.

Faith waits.
Flesh manufactures.

And the danger is not always unbelief; it is premature action dressed in spiritual language.

The Ultimate Collision, Isaac on the Altar

Genesis 22 is where intention dies and true faith stands exposed.

God had already said the promise would come through Isaac. Then God asks Abraham to offer Isaac, the very son tied to the covenant, the very embodiment of the promise.

Logically, this request made no sense; prophetically, it seemed contradictory; emotionally, it was devastating.

Yet Scripture records something striking. Abraham rose early.

He did not linger in philosophical debate.
He did not stall in spiritual language.
He moved.

Rising early reveals a heart already settled in obedience.

Faith That Walks Before It Sees

Hebrews 11 tells us that Abraham reasoned that God could even raise Isaac from the dead. This is not blind obedience; it is deep theological trust in the character of God.

He trusted the Giver more than the gift, and he trusted the promise more than the visible reality.

Meaning to obey would have stayed at the bottom of the mountain, but faith climbed it.

Where Faith Is Completed

James makes it unmistakable that Abraham’s faith was made complete by his action in offering Isaac. Not replaced by works but completed through obedience.

“You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did.” (James 2:22)

This is the missing distinction in many walks of faith today.

We mean to pray,
we mean to forgive,
we mean to step out,
we mean to trust.

But meaning is not moving.

The Spiritual Weight of Action

Abraham believed God when he left, believed God when he waited, believed God when he climbed the mountain, and believed God when he lifted the knife.

At every stage, his faith was not merely internal agreement; it was external alignment.

That is the core truth.
Intention soothes the conscience.
Obedience reveals the heart.

And this is not merely ancient history. It may become intensely personal in our lifetime.

Scripture speaks of a coming pressure, a system that will demand allegiance, not quietly but economically, socially, and spiritually. Compliance will make life easier. Refusal may carry a real cost.

At that hour, intention will not be enough.

It will not matter that someone once meant to stand firm. It will not matter that someone believed privately. The dividing line will be visible allegiance.

Just as Abraham faced a mountain where theory became action, the Church may face moments when faith is no longer abstract and conviction must translate into costly obedience.

The mark of the beast is not merely a prophecy of the future; it is also a revelation of allegiance under pressure. It exposes the same tension seen in Genesis.

Will we trust what God has said?
Or will we secure what we can see?

This is the crux of faith: the Word of God is the final authority. It is not a suggestion, a guideline, or a reference point. It carries the weight of God’s character, His promise, and His power. Faith does not negotiate with circumstances. It does not hedge on evidence. It aligns with what God has spoken, even when everything visible argues otherwise.

Abraham’s example shows this clearly. He obeyed because God had spoken. The visible reality offered no guarantee, yet he anchored himself in the authority of the Word. That is why his trust endured and why his faith moved mountains—because he treated God’s Word as final, even when every human instinct screamed otherwise.

Do we anchor ourselves in the Word or in the system?

Faith that only intends will fold under pressure.
Faith that has learned to move with God, even when outcomes are unknown, will endure.

This is why Abraham’s story matters.

Because the difference between meaning to obey and actually obeying may one day carry more than inconvenience, it may carry consequences.

And when that day comes, it will not be decided in a single dramatic moment. It will be decided by a lifetime of choosing obedience over intervention, surrender over control, and promise over pressure.

Faith that speaks sounds strong.
But faith that moves stands strong.

Not comparison, but conviction, how I pray to have even a fraction of Abraham’s faith.

 

Signing off

Tyrone