Wow!
What an outstanding and fantastic
promise this was to Abraham. However, it would be many years before he would
see it come to pass. He and his wife Sarah were childless, and how might it be
possible that this could ever happen, especially as the years and decades
slipped past, making it virtually impossible to be fulfilled?
At 100 years old, Abraham still
believed what God had told him.
‘And being not weak in faith,
Abraham considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred
years old, neither yet the deadness of Sara’s womb:’ (Romans
4:19)
He did not know how God would do
it, but he firmly believed that with God all things are possible. Like most of
us, he would have hoped and expected the miraculous to have happened quickly,
but God’s timing is not our timing, and God’s ways are not our ways.
You may have been given promises
from God years ago; you may have dreamed dreams and had visions of what the
Lord had spoken to you about, but somewhere along the road you dropped the
baton, you put down the expectation, and thought that time had passed you by.
Go back! Go back to the word of the Lord that stirred
up faith in your heart, which sent joy and anticipation into your soul. Tell
God you are sorry for not believing him, for giving up on his promise to you.
Pick up that disappointment, and
turn it around into, ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me!’
Do an ‘Abraham’ on your impossibilities!
Abraham did not look at his natural weaknesses or lack of youthful strength,
but looked to a God who was bigger than all of man’s feeble and limited abilities.
God called Abraham to leave
everything, and go to some place which he would not tell him of until he got
there! And Abraham left all and followed God’s leading. Some of us will not
even open our Bible in the morning to get a little direction on the day: (Hebrews 11:8)
But if you want to go somewhere,
you have to leave what you are doing and move out from you complacency, and
pack a big bag of expectancy.
Oh, let us make no mistake about
Abraham. He was as human as any of us, and must have wondered at times, been
tried and tested, and had deep and melancholy thoughts. Year after year he watched
his body grow older while others obtained the things they desired; but his
promises seemed to be fading.
But the Bible tells us that ‘he
patiently endured!’ What does that mean?
It means, ‘To be of a long patient
spirit, and not to lose heart; to persevere patiently and bravely in enduring
misfortunes and troubles, disappointments and let-downs.’
Did God tell you something, maybe
years ago, and you gave up on it because it never happened? Maybe you waited
and worked hard to try and make the dream come to pass with all that you could
do to promote it.
So you walked away and got on
with other things that took all of your attention.
You have to dip yourself in that
dirty old river Jordan seven times, not three, four, five, or six times (2 Kings 5:10). Seven
is the ‘complete’ number. If you give up because of the storm or the impossible
mountain, then you will never see what God can do.
The miracle comes on the seventh.
The walls fell down on the seventh long and arduous walk around the towering city
walls of Jericho. (Joshua ch. 6)
We want everything to happen like
instant coffee, but that is not God’s formula, unless an instant miracle is the
only thing that will save the day. We must patiently endure the hardships, the
lies of the devil, and the inconsistencies of our own lives.
God is faithful who promised. Do an 'Abraham' on your doubts!
It is time to pick up where you
left off from walking in dynamic and determined faith. It is time to call back
the dream, the word, the vision, or whatever it was that once fired your spirit
to ‘expect great things from God, and to attempt great things for God’.
