In God’s promise to Abraham, He used word pictures to tell Abraham how numerous his descendants would be:
And I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth; so that if anyone can number the dust of the earth, then your descendants can also be numbered.
Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them… so shall your descendants be.
Genesis 13:16, 15:5
Now obviously, Abraham could not count the sand or the stars. God was simply using sand and stars as comparisons, to show Abraham that the number of his descendants would be big, too many to count.
God, on the other hand, actually CAN count things like stars.
He counts the number of the stars;
He gives names to all of them.
Psalm 147:4
The way we read the Bible in post-modern times, we might expect to see God give Abraham a supernatural ability to count the sand or the stars.
God’s promises are not always numerically impressive, but He often promises us more than we can count or imagine.
The real beauty of Abraham’s story is not that he could have been an ancient bean counter… but that his response to God was faith.
Then he believed in the LORD;
and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.
Genesis 15:6
Abraham believed God. And what God did for him is way beyond a paradigm shift. He counted him as righteous.
May God grant you a heart of worship!
Worship by Numbers
Ramona Denton
It is a sign of strength, not of weakness, to admit that you don’t know all the answers.
~John P. Loughrane
