Hebrews 11 begins by telling us that “faith is the substance of things hoped for , the evidence of things not seen.” The rest of the chapter then reveals faith in action through the examples of the men and women that lived by faith in obedience to God’s voice in their lives. In this week’s lesson we look at the lives of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac and Jacob. Each of them demonstrated their faith by their obedience. Jesus equated love to obedience, “If you love Me you will keep my commandments” and so what we see is that faith is acted upon through obedience with is caused by love, so faith and love are tied to each other. In the lives of the patriarchal family of Israel we find that God’s love caused them to judge Him as faithful which allowed them to trust Him, obey Him and follow Him, seeing promises from far away and embracing them as already with them. Faith is not the ability to make things happen, it is the belief in the character of God that gives the grace to choose to trust Him enough to obey Him in all things at all times.