Skip to main content

Subtopic of Trust

Acting on the Word

Walking out what God has said, even when life argues against it.

33 articles in this subtopic

6 min read

Melchizedek and Jesus: The Priesthood That Outranks the Law (Genesis 14)

Day twenty-four of a walk through the whole Bible to know the God who speaks, opened up. Genesis 14:17-24 in the Hebrew: Melchizedek (malki-tsedeq), king of righteousness and king of Salem (shalem), peace; the first time God is called Most High (Elyon); and the surprising verb behind Creator of heaven and earth, qanah, the word for owning what you have made. Why the first tithe in the Bible lands before the Law, why the book of Hebrews says Levi paid it too, and how a priest-king with no recorded father is the pattern Christ fulfils.

Read article
4 min read

Who Is Melchizedek? The Priest-King Who Blesses Abram (Genesis 14)

Day twenty-four of a walk through the whole Bible to know the God who speaks. Abram rides home from the battle, and two kings come out to meet him: the king of Sodom, who wants to strike a deal, and Melchizedek, a priest-king who appears once in Genesis and never again, bringing bread and wine and a blessing. Melchizedek names the God Abram serves, Creator of heaven and earth; and an hour later Abram borrows those very words to turn down every reward Sodom offers him. Why knowing who God is set Abram free to refuse a fortune, and how a priest with no recorded father points all the way to Christ.

Read article
6 min read

Abram the Hebrew: Why 318 Men Went to War (Genesis 14)

Day twenty-three of a walk through the whole Bible to know the God who speaks, opened up. Genesis 14:1-16 in the Hebrew: Abram called the Hebrew (ibri), the man who crossed over and lives apart; the 318 trained (chanik) men born in his house; the draw out (ruq), pursue (radaph) and bring back (shuv) that shape the first rescue in Scripture; and the captives (shabah) carried off from Sodom. Why the man who held a promise could move while the man who chose by sight was taken, and how Abram going into the night for his brother foreshadows Christ, who came to proclaim liberty to the captives.

Read article
4 min read

Abram Rescues Lot: The Bible's First War (Genesis 14)

Day twenty-three of a walk through the whole Bible to know the God who speaks. Four eastern kings sweep down, sack Sodom, and drag off Lot, the nephew who once chose the best land by sight; and Abram, the man who let that land go and kept only a promise, arms 318 men born in his household and rides through the night to bring him back. Why the one holding a word from God was free to act while the one who lived by sight ended up a prisoner, why Abram fought only for his family, with the whole land already promised to him, and how a rescue in the dark points all the way to the One who came to set captives free.

Read article
6 min read

Why God Told Abram to Walk the Land He Didn't Own (Genesis 13)

Day twenty-two of a walk through the whole Bible to know the God who speaks, opened up. Genesis 13:14-18 in the Hebrew: God telling Abram to lift up (nasa) his eyes, the same verb Lot used to grab the plain; the land given (natan) forever (olam); offspring like the dust (aphar) of the earth, the very word for human frailty made the measure of his abundance; the command to walk (halak) the length and breadth of a land he did not own; and the tent and altar (mizbeach) he answered with at the Oaks of Mamre. Why the man who let go was handed everything, and how Abraham's seed reaches all the way to Christ and to us.

Read article
4 min read

All the Land You Can See: God's Promise to Abram (Genesis 13)

Day twenty-two of a walk through the whole Bible to know the God who speaks. The moment Lot's caravan disappears down the road toward the green Jordan valley, God speaks to Abram on the dry hill country he was left with, and gives him all of it, the land he can see in every direction, forever, and offspring like the dust of the earth. Why God met the man who had just opened his hands, why He told Abram to get up and walk a land he did not yet own, and how a promise held in a tent still reaches all the way to us.

Read article
5 min read

Abram, Lot, and the Meek Who Inherit the Earth (Genesis 13)

Day twenty-one of a walk through the whole Bible to know the God who speaks, opened up. Genesis 13:1-13 in the Hebrew: Abram calling on the name (qara) of the LORD back at Bethel, the strife (riv) when the land could not bear (nasa) both households, the parting (parad) in which the elder yields first choice, and Lot lifting his eyes to choose (bachar) the plain like the garden (gan) of the LORD, pitching his tent toward a wicked (ra) city. Why the meek, and not the graspers, inherit the land God promised.

Read article
4 min read

Abram and Lot Part Ways: Why He Gave Lot the Best Land (Genesis 13)

Day twenty-one of a walk through the whole Bible to know the God who speaks. Abram comes up out of Egypt and heads straight back to the altar he had left, and when a quarrel breaks out over grazing land he hands his nephew Lot first pick of it. Why the man holding God's promise could afford to let go of the best land, why Lot's choice by sight ran his tent toward Sodom, and how a squabble between herdsmen became a picture of the meek inheriting the earth.

Read article
5 min read

Go From Your Country: The Command That Made Abram a Nation (Genesis 12)

Day nineteen of a walk through the whole Bible to know the God who speaks, opened up. Genesis 12:1-9 in the Hebrew: the command lech-lecha, the promise of a goy and a great shem for a childless man, the altars Abram built at Shechem and Bethel, and the blessing of all the families of the earth that Paul says was aimed at Christ. Why God starts His whole plan of salvation with a bare word and a man who simply went.

Read article
4 min read

The Call of Abram: The Word He Left Everything For (Genesis 12)

Day nineteen of a walk through the whole Bible to know the God who speaks. A voice tells a settled seventy-five-year-old in Haran to leave his country, his people and his father's house for a land it will not name, on nothing but a promise. Why God starts a whole nation with a bare word and no map, and how hearing Him the way Abram did means trusting the promise before you can see the land, so you can hold what God has said to you when the road ahead is still hidden.

Read article
5 min read

The Flood as Un-Creation: How Genesis 7 Rewinds Genesis 1

Day eight of a walk through the whole Bible to know the God who speaks, opened up. Genesis 7 is written in the vocabulary of Genesis 1, run backward. The great deep, tehom, that the Spirit hovered over on the first page bursts back open; the breath of life, neshamah, that God breathed into man's nostrils is emptied out; God blots out, machah, what He had made. The chapter reads as un-creation, with one sealed box of life carried on top of the ruin, sealed shut by God's own hand, the oldest picture of new creation in Christ.

Read article
3 min read

Noah's Flood: Who Shut the Door of the Ark? (Genesis 7)

Day eight of a walk through the whole Bible to know the God who speaks. In Genesis 7 Noah does everything God commands, loads his family and the animals, and climbs into the ark on dry ground before a single drop falls. Then one small line turns the whole story: the LORD shut him in. Noah could build the ark, but only God could close the door, the first picture of a rescue God begins and God secures, the way that runs to Jesus.

Read article
6 min read

Pitch and Atonement: The Hidden Word in Noah's Ark (Genesis 6:9-22)

Day seven of a walk through the whole Bible to know the God who speaks, opened up. Genesis 6:9–22 in Hebrew. Noah tamim, 'blameless', walking with God in the same words used of Enoch; a world full of chamas, violence; the tevah, 'ark', that returns only once more in Scripture, for the baby Moses; the pitch, kopher, from kaphar, the verb that everywhere else means atonement; and berith, the first 'covenant' God ever names.

Read article
4 min read

Noah and the Ark: The First Time God Says Covenant (Genesis 6)

Day seven of a walk through the whole Bible to know the God who speaks. Genesis 6:9–22 tells the account of Noah, a blameless man walking with God in a world full of violence, told to build an ark and seal it with pitch. Before the first raindrop God says covenant for the first time in Scripture, and the ark becomes the Bible's first picture of being carried through judgment, the way that runs to Jesus.

Read article
6 min read

Babel Means Confused: The Pun Hidden in the Tower's Name (Genesis 11:1-9)

Day sixteen of a walk through the whole Bible to know the God who speaks, opened up. Genesis 11:1-9 in the Hebrew: the pun that ties Babel to balal, why a name (shem) is the thing they reach for, what the one lip (saphah) had to do with their pride, the LORD who comes down to a tower meant to reach Him, and how the scattering is answered when God gives Abram the name Babel could not build and pours it out again at Pentecost. To be known by Him beats any name we make.

Read article
4 min read

The Tower of Babel: Why God Came Down to Scatter Them (Genesis 11:1-9)

Day sixteen of a walk through the whole Bible to know the God who speaks. The whole earth has one language and one plan, a tower to the heavens and a name of their own. Genesis 11:1-9, why a united people building upward is the reverse of trusting the God who had already told them where to go, what it means that the LORD came down to a tower meant to reach Him, and how the scattering of Babel is answered at Pentecost.

Read article
5 min read

Made in God's Image: Why Shedding Blood Strikes at God (Genesis 9:1-7)

Day eleven of a walk through the whole Bible to know the God who speaks, opened up. Genesis 9 opens the new world with a blessing lifted straight from creation and a law written to guard human life. The Hebrew shows why it matters so much. Man is made in the tselem, the image of God, and the life sits in the dam, the blood, so to shed a man's blood is to strike at the likeness of the Maker. The blessing over Noah, the ban on eating blood, and how the image and the shed blood both find their end in Christ.

Read article

More from this pillar

Trust

To trust is to act on the word. Not because the circumstances have changed, but because the One who spoke is faithful. Trust turns hearing, prophesying, recording, testing, and remembering into how we live today.

See all trust articles

Try Doxa free

Free on iOS and Android.

Download on the App StoreGet it on Google Play

Know the God who speaks.

Every word He speaks is an invitation to know Him. Engage His encouragement.

Scripture as the Standard. Your own record of what God has said to you. Available now on iOS and Android.

Download on the App StoreGet it on Google Play