When Trust Is Enough
WHEN FAITH FEELS TOO SMALL
Most of us never say it out loud.
But when prayer feels flat,
when the Christian-task-list is incomplete,
and when we replay that one failure from our life we wish we could erase,
we second-guess whether we’re even a Christian in the first place.
Or at minimum, we think we’re not a good enough Christian.
Maybe you’ve squeezed your eyes shut, trying to “believe harder,” and then thinking the quietness inside means God isn’t listening… to you.
Have you ever said or thought something like this:
I believe, or at least I think I do, but I don’t feel anything changing.
Or how about this:
I want to have stronger faith, but some days it feels like I’m barely hanging on.
It’s during these times of doubting when we hear the word grace and we flinch, because it sounds too good for someone with our history.
All of these thoughts and feelings are signs that we still wrestle with a works-based view of faith.
When we get to Romans 4, the people Paul is talking to had this deep-down belief that being right with God came from doing everything right.
Keep the rules.
Keep the ceremonies.
Keep the traditions.
They were convinced God’s approval rested on their performance. Paul steps in to confront a mindset that trusted religious heritage and spiritual performance checklists. So Paul corrects their thinking with Abraham’s story.
WHY YOUR GRIP ISN’T THE POINT
Abraham was, humanly speaking, the founder of our Jewish nation. What did he discover about being made right with God? If his good deeds had made him acceptable to God, he would have had something to boast about. But that was not God’s way. For the Scriptures tell us, “Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his faith.”
When people work, their wages are not a gift, but something they have earned. 5 But people are counted as righteous, not because of their work, but because of their faith in God who forgives sinners. —Romans 4:1-5
What Paul is doing with Abraham is dismantling the idea that God waits for us to perform well enough before he accepts us.
Before there were commands to obey,
before there were rituals to keep,
before he had done anything that looked “religious,”
Abraham simply trusted what God said.
And Abraham’s trust, that God would do what He promised, is what God counted as righteousness.
Let’s get clear about what righteousness (dikaiosynē) is. Read it as salvation—being made right with God. The best way to understand it comes from N. T. Wright, who describes righteousness here as “God’s declaration that someone is in the covenant family” and therefore fully accepted.
Paul is showing them and us that if righteousness (salvation) could be earned, Abraham would have had every right to brag. But the whole reason his story matters is because he didn’t earn it. God is the one who forgives, and faith trusts that he will do what he said. This is simply opening your hands to receive what God is freely giving. Abraham becomes the proof that God makes people right through trust in his promise, not through the strength of their spiritual performance.
And this is where it comes back to us. We often slip back into the idea that God is measuring us, grading us, waiting for stronger faith before he calls us his own. But Romans 4 tells you that God isn’t looking at your grip strength.
So, when you’re swimming in diapers and running kids to all the places they need to be, fully aware Bible reading hasn’t been checked off your list that day…
Or you feel your doubts disqualify you…
Or the guilt you’re carrying around from legalistic parents whose voice still rings in your ears: “You better not mess up.”
Or the prayers you whisper and immediately second-guess—wondering if God is willing to even listen to you, because people with real faith shouldn’t struggle like you do… right?
God steps right into all of that and says, “I’m the one who holds you and my grip is unbreakable.”
In Romans 4, “faith” means trusting that God is the one who saves us, the one who brings us into his covenant family through the work of Christ. It’s dependence, not achievement. Paul’s point is clear. What saves you is God’s gracious promise fulfilled through Jesus Christ.
A DOOR ANYONE CAN WALK THROUGH
We want to clearly see how Paul has been building a foundation with these first four chapters.
In chapter 1, he shows that all humanity is trapped in sin and cannot rescue itself.
In chapter 2, he makes it clear that this rescue won’t come from ethnic or religious heritage or from keeping the religious rules of the Old Testament.
In chapter 3, he announces the turning point. God’s own righteous character moved him to rescue the world through Jesus’ death and resurrection.
Next, chapter 4 opens the door wide for anyone to walk through. God is forming a new kind of family through faith, one that is not built on ethnicity, family lineage, or spiritual achievement. It is a family made up of people who take God at his word, held together by what God has done through Jesus.
And the rest of Romans is Paul showing where this story goes next. This new family is called into a whole new way of life together. A covenant community shaped by grace, grounded in the gospel of Jesus, learning to live out the kind of love God has for us. This is who we are now. A people trusting God to keep his promises and learning to live so our lives reflect we belong to him.
©2026 Greg McNichols, All rights reserved.
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