By faith Abraham offered Isaac as a sacrifice when God tested him … even though the Lord had promised that it was through Isaac that Abraham’s descendants would be numbered. It was by faith that Isaac promised future blessings to his sons, Jacob and Esau. And It was by faith that Jacob, before his death, blessed each of Joseph’s sons and bowed in worship while leaning on his staff.

Hebrews 11:17-18, 20-21

How do we fulfill the call to love the Lord God with all our heart, soul, and strength? The obvious answer might be that we know the love that he has for us. A little deeper look reveals the foundation stone that lies even beneath love: the gift of faith. From the very first sin – where Adam and Eve gave up that gift for the false promise of self-deification – to the stories of true promises and blessings that accrued to those who believed and obeyed, trusting, resting, and relying on God have been singular hallmarks of a relationship of mutual love between the Lord and his people.

As I’ve been writing over the last few months about intimacy with God, it’s become increasingly obvious that faith is at the heart of nearness to him. And that it has always been. Furthermore, a survey of the prayers, aspirations, supplications, stories, and desperate cries of his people show that there is nothing in a human life that is outside faith’s (and thus, intimacy’s) orbit. The Psalms are, of course, a great repository of such profound expressions of ultimate hope. Another is the 11th chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews. Over the course of forty verses, the author chronicles a small sampling of men and women who faced the most personally disastrous circumstances with the living expectation that they were safe, secure, and loved by the God who would never “fail or forsake them” (Heb. 13:4).

What immediately strikes me in Hebrews 11 is how much of it details trusting in God for those he has entrusted to us. One of the references is so radical as to shock us, even after repeated readings. Others are more “garden variety” vignettes of a simple, yet sometimes elusive, confidence that the Father’s goodness truly endures through all generations. This is an especially poignant aspect of parental care, but it is relevant for anyone in relationships that engender loving and solicitous concern (or loving, but apprehensive concern).

The verses that I have cited run the gamut of emotional and spiritual depth, beginning with Abraham and the call to offer his son to God. For Abraham, pretty much everything was riding on this young lad. In Isaac was the fulfillment of a father’s hope for legacy. How would all the nations of the earth experience blessing without an heir through whom the promise could be continued? Scripture doesn’t chronicle Abraham’s mental state, but it could not have been easy – however faith-filled he was – to put into motion the necessary steps to obedience.

For fathers and mothers, the story hits too close to home. None of us sees in our children a messianic destiny. And yet, the temptation to possess; to live life through the next generation; to fretfully interfere or control (or at least attempt to do so) circumstances and even our sons and daughters themselves is sometimes almost overwhelming. We try with many subtle arguments to convince ourselves, the world, and God himself, that we think and act for their own good. In the end, we generally only fool ourselves.

The same dynamic goes for husbands and wives, sons and daughters, and friends of various degrees of closeness. If we agree with the biblical assessment of the human heart as “desperately wicked” and as the headquarters for idol manufacturing, we will understand relationships to be a locus for serious challenges to our faith (and thus our intimacy, both with the Lord and with our fellow-humans. Whether we manifest dependency, co-dependency, anxiety; when we are overbearing, over-protective, or jealous – these are all displays of our unbelief that resist the call to give our closest companions to the one who is the far better Friend, Father, and Companion.

So this is an introduction to what I’m planning for this blog over the next number of months. We’ll take various narratives from the Bible that illustrate real-world faith and see what they mean for us. I’ve already begun with some thoughts about relationships, and that’s where we’ll go next time, with Abraham and Sarah on deck. After that, there’s a full line-up waiting in the wings.

Lord, we believe, help our unbelief.