The inability to taste is a terrible experience. I remember it distinctly as a symptom of the Covid virus. Gone were the rich, aromatic notes in that morning cup of coffee; all that was left was the sensation of heat and the effect of caffeine. Gone were the sharp, distinct flavors of the egg-and-bacon breakfast sandwich, though the stomach was satisfied. Food and drink remained necessary, but consuming them was so, well, joyless.

How often do we pick up our Bibles with the same sort of drudgery? We know we need God’s words to live, but as we chew, we find no flavor. What once warmed and satisfied our hearts now seems more like the bread in the Gibeonite’s sacks, “dry and crumbly” (Joshua 9:12).

The operative word in the previous sentence is seems. Lack of taste for the word reveals far more about us than it does the word of God. “Those for whom prophetic doctrine is tasteless,” warned John Calvin, “ought to be thought of as lacking taste buds” (Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.8.2). Lacking a taste for the hearty bread of God, we seek to satisfy ourselves with the empty calories offered by a deceitful world. And when once a taste for worldly fare is acquired, joy in the triune God grows strangely dim.

The struggle to be satisfied in God is part and parcel of daily life for believers. “By nature,” writes John Piper, “we get more pleasure from God’s gifts than from himself” (When I Don’t Desire God, 9). As those who have been corrupted by father Adam’s sin we are, all of us, prone to “forsake the one true God for prodigious trifles” (Institutes, 1.5.11). So how do we fight for joy in God? In his mercy, he has given us ample means, and the first and foremost of these is his own word to us in Holy Scripture.

Fountain of All Joy

Why does God’s word play such a crucial role in our fight for joy? Before we answer, we actually have to start by asking a different question: Where does joy come from? Ultimately, joy comes not from reading a book, nor from meditation, nor from prayer, nor from this article. It has a very specific source.

The psalmist writes, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. . . . God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalm 73:25–26). And elsewhere, “In your presence there is fullness of joy” (Psalm 16:11). There is one, and only one, source of joy: the eternal and perfect God, who dwells forever in the felicity of triune love. From his fullness alone can we be satisfied because he made us (oh, glorious truth!) to be satisfied in him. “Whom have I in heaven but you?”

It is worth pausing here to ask ourselves, Do I believe this? Do I really believe that in himself God is replete and that he created all things out of the superabundance of his own inner life? Do I trust the testimony of the beloved apostle when he writes, “God is love” (1 John 4:8)? If we do not believe that the only source of true joy is God himself, then the gospel, while it may taste sweet from time to time, will be just one among a host of delicacies spread before us. We may rejoice in God, but only as the provider of other joys.

The daily struggle for joy in God is a fight of faith. We strive against the deceits of the world, the flesh, and the enemy of our souls to cling to God as the one who has life and joy in himself and freely offers them to us in the Son. And one of the crucial ways we fight is by opening his word.

‘Seek My Face’

We are daily presented with fresh opportunities to pursue God as our greatest treasure. In his mercy and kindness, he commands us, “Seek my face” (Psalm 27:8). And he has not withheld from us the means to do so.

“Food is for eating. Good food is for feasting. And God wants us to feast on his word.”

Holy Scripture is the revealed word of God. It is the principal means he has given to us to seek him and to hear his voice. Piper writes, “The fundamental reason that the word of God is essential to joy in God is that God reveals himself mainly by his word” (When I Don’t Desire God, 95). We do not seek our God in mindless meditation, emptying ourselves of thoughts and ideas. Christians do meditate as a means to seek God, but we do so by filling our minds and thoughts with his word, carefully following the shafts of revealed light up to the Source.

And what — or better, who — do we see as our eyes are filled with heavenly light? We see him who is “the radiance of the glory of God,” our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ (Hebrews 1:3). God the Father calls us to seek him by his Spirit in his Son. Jesus made this plain when he said, “No one comes to Father except through me. . . . Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:6, 9).

When we open the word of God, we behold by faith the Word of God. In beholding the Word of God, we gaze upon the glory of God. In gazing upon the glory of God, we are filled (as Anselm writes) with “the blessedness for which [we were] made” (Proslogion 1) — fellowship with the Father through the Son in the Spirit.

‘Your Face, Lord, Do I Seek’

God made us to rejoice in him. And he has given us his word as the principal means to that joy. But how do we actually wield Scripture in our fight for joy? The psalmist responds to the Lord’s command “Seek my face” with “Your face, Lord, do I seek” (Psalm 27:8). How do we follow him in his pursuit? I’ll draw your attention to two aspects of faithful seeking that bring us back to where this article started: tasty food.

Seek by Fasting

God calls us to delight in him by fasting from this world.

Many are the delicacies offered to us by the world. The confectioners are hard at work, ever seeking to delight our senses and satiate our bellies. They want to fill us with goodies that, though tasty in the eating, will turn to ash in the stomach and leave us feeling bloated and sick. The pleasures of the world — anything and everything that promises to yield lasting happiness apart from God — amount to nothing but vanity.

If we are to have taste buds for what is true, we must fast from such delicacies and train ourselves to enjoy wholesome food. Fasting, in this sense, doesn’t mean we forsake all earthly goods, only that we learn to enjoy them properly as gifts received from the Father of lights.

So, how do we fast? By taking seriously how Jesus refutes the devil’s tasty temptation: “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’” (Matthew 4:4). We need to carefully consider what makes up our steady diet and ask if we’ve developed tastes for that which leaves us empty. We can test whether or not we’ve acquired a taste for the ephemeral by asking a few diagnostic questions.

What grabs your attention when you first wake up? Are you more eager to read emails or check what people said about your most recent post than you are to kneel in prayer with God’s word open before you?

What rhythms punctuate your days and weeks? Is your everyday life marked more by the demands of a busy schedule or by a repeated turning to hear the Lord?

What most informs the way you think and speak of the events of your life and the wider world? Do you primarily refract them through the lens of the latest political changes or most recent trends? Or do you consider them in light of the One who orders all things according to his good and sovereign will?

The list could go on and on. The fight for right fasting is won not in a single day nor, unfortunately, in the present life. We must, like a sommelier, carefully train our taste buds to “test everything; hold fast what is good [and] abstain from every form of evil” (1 Thessalonians 5:21–22).

Seek by Feasting

God also calls us to delight in him by feasting on his word.

God frequently refers to his word in terms of food. Man lives not by bread alone (Deuteronomy 8:5). “Your words were found, and I ate them, and [they] became to me a joy and the delight of my heart” (Jeremiah 15:16). Peter likens the word to “pure spiritual milk” (1 Peter 2:2), the author of Hebrews compares “the word of righteousness” to “solid food” (Hebrews 5:12–14), and David writes, “The law of the Lord is . . . sweeter . . . than honey and drippings of the honeycomb” (Psalm 19:10). Food is for eating. Good food is for feasting. And God wants us to feast on his word.

How do we feast? We feast by attentively reading his word. Attentiveness requires putting away distractions, soaking without hurrying, and attending carefully to what God says.

We feast by meditating on and memorizing his word, learning to speak and think with the grain of Scripture and hold fast the myriad promises made.

We feast by praying his word, speaking back to God in our own varied situations his very words, aiming to conform our will to his.

We feast by sharing what he shows us of himself in his word with others, inviting them to try a bite of what we have enjoyed.

We feast by hearing his word taught, humbly submitting ourselves to those whom he has appointed to lay the table for us.

We feast by singing his word, joining with the saints and angels as we address one another “in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with all [our] heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 5:19–20).

Come, Eat

In one of his final appearances to the disciples before he ascended to heaven, Jesus cooked a meal and invited them to come and eat (John 21:12). He has done the same for us, but instead of a few fish on the beach, he has spread an unimaginable feast, putting before us the finest delicacies of his glory and calling us to banquet at his table.

So, come daily to eat and drink your fill. Feast on the food of his word, and find that he alone truly satisfies.

Paul’s last letter brought the manly business of Christian pastoring uncomfortably close to young Timothy. Uncomfortably close, as the front line to the soldier.

The heat of “fanning his gift into flame” made his palms sweat; was he willing to pastor at Ephesus after all that has happened . . . would soon happen? Timothy didn’t need a reminder about the cost of ministry; his tears were memorial enough (2 Timothy 1:4). Paul, his father in the faith, wrote him once more before his execution: “The time of my departure has come” (2 Timothy 4:6). Finally, they were putting down the lion.

Paul welcomed the cost of leadership. He lived ready to suffer for Christ in whatever city the Spirit directed (Acts 20:22–23). “I am ready not only to be imprisoned but even to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 21:13). As Jesus made good on his promise — “I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:16) — Paul received his orders manfully. Here at the end, he writes to Timothy, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4:7). Triumph.

But what of Timothy? With shackles around Paul’s wrists, a blade above his neck, would he point his dear son away from the conflict? Just as Timothy seems to flinch and takes steps back, Paul stops him: “Do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God” (2 Timothy 1:8). Mount the horse, Timothy. Lead God’s people forward — come what may.

Pastoring, my son, is a manly business.

Fraught with Danger

The context of Timothy’s ministry — the context of ours — was (and is) a crucified Messiah. Jesus promised his first preachers, “If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you” (John 15:20). As Timothy enters his ministry, he associates the pastorate not so much with microphones as with martyrdom; not merely with preaching but with persecution for that preaching. He hesitates to exercise his gifts among a public who crucified his Lord, stoned the prophets, and hunted the apostles, as we might hesitate to minister in the heart of a Muslim country.

Fellow shepherds, have you considered the physical threat of our calling? I, for one, never had until a potential danger lingered around the flock. The gravity of what-ifs fell upon me. But what startled me most was not wondering whether I — father to four young children — should rush in if the worst came, but realizing that I had already chosen to by becoming a pastor. I enlisted to teach, preach, shepherd, and guide — but also to suffer, defend, and die, if the Lord should choose. As a son with his mother, a husband with his wife, a father with his children, so a pastor with his sheep. I am to defend them against all enemies foreign and domestic — spiritual and physical.

Brothers, receive it now: “Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2:3). Yet like young Timothy, we ask Paul, How? Consider his counsel:

I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands, for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control. (2 Timothy 1:6–7)

Yes, Nero. Yes, false teachers. Yes, a church slow to support you. Yes, youth and inexperience. Yes, persecution and possibly martyrdom (2 Timothy 3:12). But I call heaven to witness my charge to you: preach the word, Timothy (2 Timothy 4:1–2). Or have you forgotten your God-given Spirit?

Spirit of the Pastor

Pastors, consider your Spirit. Interpreters debate whether the given “spirit” is only new nobility in our own spirits or includes the Holy Spirit himself. I take it to be the latter, which forges the former (see 2 Timothy 1:8, 14). Regardless, we know this: the new spirit of a man in Christ relies utterly on the Spirit of Christ in that man. Both must be in view.

Here is the point: Shepherds, remember that the Spirit of God empowers you for your life’s work. Your Spirit is one of courage, power, love, and self-control. Brothers, consider your Spirit.

Spirit of Courage and Power

God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power . . .

Paul first reminds Timothy what Spirit he does not have: one of fear, or more exactly, cowardice. In extrabiblical literature, the Greek word (deilia) “refers to one who flees from battle, and has a strong pejorative sense referring to cowardice” (The ESV Study Bible). God’s Spirit does not send him fleeing as a coward but makes the man the very sculpture of courage. And he bestows power and makes the man more than a man — even if, like Paul, he goes forth to die like a man.

To illustrate, consider the effect of God’s Spirit upon three men in the Old Testament — Samson, Saul, and David — and the apostles in the New.

SAMSON

Notice the Spirit’s influence on Samson. First, “the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him, and although he had nothing in his hand, he tore the lion in pieces as one tears a young goat” (Judges 14:6). Next, “the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him, and he went down to Ashkelon and struck down thirty men of the town and took their spoil” (Judges 14:19). And greater still,

the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him, and the ropes that were on his arms became as flax that has caught fire, and his bonds melted off his hands. And he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, and put out his hand and took it, and with it he struck 1,000 men. (Judges 15:14–15)

The Spirit of God rushes upon him, and he rushes upon the enemy — lions, towns, legions.

SAUL AND DAVID

Or consider the Spirit’s influence on goatish Saul. While the Spirit was with him, he was “turned into another man” (1 Samuel 10:6–7). The Spirit straightened his back and rushed upon him, and he bellowed a war cry to rally the twelve tribes together (1 Samuel 11:5–7). Saul was mighty, for a time, but that might came from the Holy Spirit, and when Saul rejected the Lord and his word for fear of the people, the Spirit flew, as it were, to David.

I have underappreciated the Spirit in the David story. Just before the legend of his giant-slaying is born, we read, “Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward” (1 Samuel 16:13). David is admirable in many ways, but what is David apart from God’s Spirit? Without the Spirit, his courage is folly, his story unremembered, his songs unsung. But the Lord’s Spirit was with David: writing, worshiping, warring. And David knew what made him great. When he too sins horribly, he pleads mercy from Saul’s fate: “Take not your Holy Spirit from me” (Psalm 51:11).

APOSTLES

On to the New Testament. What are the apostles apart from God’s Spirit? Sheep, who in their own spirits flee from their Master in the garden and then bleat timidly behind locked doors. But these sheep became lions at Pentecost. They obeyed their Lord: “Stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49). When Christ baptizes with his Spirit, tongues of fire fill their mouths, Peter stands to preach, and thousands are saved. Here, a mighty Samson slays the enemies of God with the sword of the word — not one thousand, but three.

Spirit of Love

God gave us a spirit . . . [of] love.

When the Spirit of power leads men, they leave behind a holy legacy. One unsought expression of this is the power to suffer. It takes one kind of courage to ride forth to slay; it takes another to ride forth to be slain. The power of a lion to lie down as a lamb.

“Stephen, full of grace and power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people” (Acts 6:8). Full of grace, full of power, he preached mightily: “They could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he was speaking” (Acts 6:10). And when that speech turns on them, they grind their teeth and rush upon him. So he dies the first Christian martyr. Note his final prayer: “Falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them’” (Acts 7:60). The Spirit, not just of power to preach, but of love to pray for the hearers murdering you.

This Spirit must empower the mission: “The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith” (1 Timothy 1:5). A love that preaches, a love that serves, a love that is willing to be “poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith” and “rejoices” to be so slain if it means others’ good (Philippians 2:17–18). Timothy, writes Paul, “I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory” (2 Timothy 2:10). His wounds are not for his salvation but theirs.

Remember, brothers, we have Christ’s Spirit to love his people with Christ’s love (Philippians 1:8). When faced with imprisonment or execution, the man of God is divinely resourced to respond as John Buyan did while he sat in prison for preaching: “I did often say before the Lord, that if to be hanged up presently before their eyes [his church’s] would be means to awake in them and confirm them in the truth, I gladly should consent to it” (The Pilgrim’s Progress, xxvii). No greater love exists than this: that someone lay down his life for his friends or his sheep. That is the love of Jesus wrought by God’s Spirit.

Spirit of Self-Control

God gave us a spirit . . . [of] self-control.

The Spirit of God and the spirit of evil is contrasted in the story of Saul. The Spirit of God rushes away at Saul’s sin, replaced by a tormenting spirit from God. It makes him rabid.

The next day a harmful spirit from God rushed upon Saul, and he raved within his house while David was playing the lyre, as he did day by day. Saul had his spear in his hand. And Saul hurled the spear, for he thought, “I will pin David to the wall.” But David evaded him twice. (1 Samuel 18:10–11)

He goes on to throw a spear at his own son.

The Spirit of God works self-mastery in those he masters. God’s power is aimed at a man’s dearest lusts. And the flesh dies hard. He bears his fruit in our lives — fruit lethal to the deeds of the body. Young Timothy ought to justify his ministry by the Spirit’s influence in his life: “Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity” (1 Timothy 4:12). Samson slayed a thousand with a jawbone, David killed his ten thousand on the field, yet even both of these men fell at home to lusts of the flesh.

The minister of Christ, the conqueror in Christ, the sufferer for him, will be a self-controlled man. When he hears threats nearby, he will not panic or renounce Christ or flee from his people. He will be collected, calm, a presence that has his wits about him when the wolves come around. Our people need our self-control: “Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers” (1 Timothy 4:16).

Good Shepherds

Pastoring is a manly business. Maybe soft men slipped in during the twentieth century. It will not be so in the decades to come. Pastors put the target on their backs. Men, manly men, must preach because they assume the violent responses to their preaching that can come. Egalitarian fantasies and feminist fictions would return to the dark chasm whence they came if more pastors were dragged mid-sermon into the town square and flogged with 39 lashes for their testimony (2 Corinthians 11:24), or if we held in our hands final letters from now martyred pastors. Women “pastors” are a luxury of peacetime.

Pastor, it is a hard word, but if the Lord Jesus wants to make you his paper and write his sermon in your flesh, shall we not bless his holy name? If, like Paul, you bear on your body some marks of the Lord (Galatians 6:17), then “share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God” — yes, and go away “rejoicing that [you] were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name,” if you still can go away (Acts 5:41).

Flesh and blood cannot abide this word. We shouldn’t expect it to. Pastoring is not merely a manly business but a spiritual business.

Brothers, we need to remember our Spirit — the Holy Spirit of courage, of power, of love, and of self-control. Follow Christ into suffering, if it comes to that. Remember: a good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. By the Spirit he has given, we will be good shepherds until the Great Shepherd returns.

Had you been there that very moment, watching from a distance, you wouldn’t have observed anything dramatic. I’m talking about the moment Abraham (still called Abram at the time) stepped out of his tent and gazed into the heavens, looking at the stars.

You may have heard him muttering something or other, perhaps at some point raising his hands or bowing to the ground. These gestures wouldn’t have seemed out of character to you because everyone knew Abram was a deeply pious man. And being tired, since it was the middle of the night and all, you probably would have left Abram to whatever he was doing and headed to bed.

You would not have known that this was a defining moment in Abram’s life. You certainly wouldn’t have guessed this was a defining moment in world history that would impact billions of people. Because it would have seemed so undramatic.

But that’s the way moments like these — moments that powerfully direct and shape the arc of history — often appear at first. And in this case, what made the world-changing minutes of stargazing so quietly monumental was that this old man, in the deep recesses of his heart, believed God.

Pushed Nearly Beyond Belief

To understand the profundity of this defining moment, however, we need to see how this old man’s belief had been pushed to the very brink.

It all began in Genesis 12, where God delivered to Abram a promise that would have been incredible on its own, quite apart from the fact that Abram, at age 75, and Sarai, at age 66, as yet had no children:

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:1–3)

So, “by faith Abraham obeyed,” packing up his household and setting out, though “not knowing where he was going” (Hebrews 11:8). And when he and his small tribe arrived at Shechem, God spoke to him again and said, “To your offspring I will give this land” (Genesis 12:7).

Time passed. God’s blessing rested on Abram and his tribe, which included his nephew Lot’s household, and their combined possessions and herds grew larger — so large, in fact, that Abram and Lot had to separate into two tribes. Still, Abram had no offspring — the key to the fulfillment of the Lord’s greatest promise to him. Nonetheless, the Lord once again affirmed his promise (Genesis 13:14–16).

More time passed. God continued to prosper whatever Abram did. And once again, the Lord appeared to him and said,

Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great. (Genesis 15:1)

But for Abram, now in his eighties, and Sarai in her seventies, there was still the same glaring problem. Amid all the abundant blessing of prosperity God had showered on him, there was one conspicuous, crucial place of poverty: Abram still had no offspring.

Desperate Prayer of a Man of Faith

It was at this point that Abram could not contain his anguished perplexity over the ongoing void at the core of God’s promises, and it poured out in a desperate prayer:

“O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.” (Genesis 15:2–3)

The apostle Paul later wrote, “No unbelief made [Abram] waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised” (Romans 4:20–21). But in this prayer, do we overhear Abram’s faith wavering?

No. What we’re hearing is not unbelief, but sincere perplexity. And there’s a difference. Abram’s perplexity is similar to the young virgin Mary’s perplexity when Gabriel tells her that she will “conceive in [her] womb and bear a son.” She responds, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” (Luke 1:30, 34). It’s a reasonable question; virgins don’t get pregnant. Abram’s question is also reasonable with regard to nature; barren women past childbearing years do not get pregnant.

God was not offended or dishonored by Mary’s or Abraham’s sincere perplexity, which is why he responds to both with gracious kindness. And God’s answers are also reasonable, even if his reasonableness often extends far beyond the limits of human reason (“Is anything too hard for the Lord?” Genesis 18:14).

So, in answer to Abram’s sincerely desperate prayer, God graciously invites him to step outside.

Starry, Starry Night

God says to Abram,

“Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” (Genesis 15:5)

Here, suddenly, is a defining moment for Abram. God’s answer doesn’t include how Abram is going to obtain descendants. All God does is reaffirm, and even expand the scope of, what he has already promised. In other words, “I’m going to give you more offspring than you can count or even imagine. Do you believe me?”

And old Abram, with an old wife and a childless tent, looking up into the night sky so full of stars that in some places they looked like clouds of light, with the word of the Lord ringing in his mind, realizes that whatever God is doing is about something much bigger than he has yet grasped, and so he resolves to trust “that God [is] able to do what he [has] promised” (Romans 4:21).

[Abram] believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness. (Genesis 15:6)

“The world would never be the same because of that moment on that starry, starry night.”

No one, not even Abram, could have seen just how history-shaping, how destiny-determining, this moment was, when a man was justified — counted righteous — in the eyes of God simply because he believed God. Because a man believed God’s promises over his own perceptions. Because a man trusted God and did not lean on his own understanding (Proverbs 3:5). The world would never be the same after that moment on that starry, starry night.

Joy Beyond Belief

I’m not saying it was smooth faith-sailing from then on for the man God renamed Abraham, “the father of a multitude of nations” (Genesis 17:5). It wasn’t. The Hagar and Ishmael event, as well as others, were still in the future. Isaac, the first of the promised offspring, wouldn’t be born for another fifteen years or so. And God had another defining moment in store for Abraham on the slopes of Mount Moriah. The path of faith is a rugged one, and almost always more demanding than we expect.

But after that night, Abraham did not waver in his belief that God would, somehow, do what he had promised. And God did. He made both Abraham and Sarah, and all who knew them, laugh for joy — “joy inexpressible and full of glory” (1 Peter 1:8) — when Isaac was finally born. For that’s where the rugged path of faith, the hard way that leads to life (Matthew 7:14), ultimately leads: to “fullness of joy and . . . pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).

“The path of faith is a rugged one, and almost always more demanding than we expect.”

God leads most of his children, who are Abraham’s children because they share Abraham’s faith (Romans 4:16), to defining moments of faith, moments when our faith is pushed nearly to a point beyond belief, or so it seems to us. These moments may not appear dramatic to others. But to us, in the deep recesses of our hearts, everything is on the line. And at these moments, everything comes down to a simple but profound, and perhaps anguishing, question: Will I trust God?

What usually isn’t apparent to us is how significant the moment is for an untold number of others. For it is often true that in “obtaining [as] the outcome of [our] faith, the salvation of [our] souls” (1 Peter 1:9), what also results in the years and centuries that follow is the salvation of others — so many, perhaps, that they would boggle our minds if we could see them.

When you believe God, he counts it to you as righteousness, as full acceptance from God himself. And when you believe God, it leads to the Isaac-laughter of inexpressible joy as you at last see God do for you what he has promised. And when you believe God, you will share inexpressible joy with a host of others who, because you believed, will be laughing in joy with you.