Do you want to be sure that last week's promise that you will be an air of the world will happen in your life.

Is that practical?

If you could have guarantee, if you could have certainty, if you could have surety that you would be an air of the world,

would that not be practical?

And if you answer no to that,

I am at a loss to know what to say next.

But it is practical to have rock, solid assurance

that you can be an air of the world.

Who are the people most willing to live risk-taking lives of love?

It's those who are sure that God will indeed keep his promises.

In this episode of Light and Truth, John Piper opens Romans 4, 16 to 21, to show us the one thing that can make us sure.

This sermon was originally preached at Bethlehem Baptist Church on September 19th, 1999.

Father, we're aware from this text and from our own experience that apart from the kind of power that was exerted on

Abraham's behalf in order to bear Isaac, we would be dead.

Spiritually lifeless, insensitive to all the moving of the Holy Spirit in the world without joy, without hope, without faith.

And so we reckon ourselves utterly depended on you in this moment, because our desire in being here is to see you and love you, and praise you, and savor you and delight in you and enjoy you and bank our hope on you and walk out of here a friend of yours, conscious of your sweet grace in our lives, all of which is beyond us and is supernatural.

So I ask for you to come and to shed abroad the love of God in our hearts and to awaken the dead and to bring forth from slumbers vital joyful alert God-sensitive faith.

Oh God let none be callous now as you work.

Your work is mighty.

It shatters stone and it melts and it cuts to the dividing of soul and

spirit bone and marrow and reveals the secret things of the heart. It never returns void. It accomplishes what you

appoint and I beg of you that you would appoint life for it this morning and not hardening. In Jesus' name, amen. Last Sunday I held up a great promise to you that to Abraham and to all of his heirs including the

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