The Book of Genesis provides a great entrance to God and His intention for His creation. It never gets old no matter how many times I read it.
The stories of Abraham and Sarah reminds us of the importance of trusting God. Stay with me as I quickly point out a few things:
Genesis 12:3 shares with us a promise made by God to Abraham: “And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great, and thou shall be a blessing”. Then Chapter 15 speaks more of this promise. Verses 3 & 4 says: “And Abram said, Behold to me thou hast given no seed: and , lo, one born in my house is mine heir. And, behold, the word of the Lord came unto him saying, this shall not be thine heir; but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir.”
Sadly, Abraham Got anxious and had sex with his Maid on the prompting of his wife. Maybe he thought he was helping God fulfill his will. His human thinking however, only created problems. This was not the seed God promised to Abraham. God intended for this seed to come from Abraham and his wife.
God had to instruct Abraham again, this time clearly indicating that Sarah would have a child. And you know what? Sarah did have a child as promised. Skip down to chapter 21 and what do we read? “And the Lord visited Sarah as he said, and the Lord did unto Sarah as he had spoken.”
When coming to God’s promises and his plan for our lives, we often think we need to speed up things and we give into the pressures around us, but our fleshy mistakes only create havoc in our lives and it is never worth it. Sometimes the pressures to stray from God’s promise can come from a family member and when it does it becomes tricky. It is comforting to know, however, that God strengthens us to resist any pressure, it does not matter where them come from.
In Chapter 20, it speaks of Abraham journeying to the South and staying in a city called Gerar. Abraham told the King, Abimelech, that Sarah was his Sister. He was afraid that if he confessed her to be his wife, they would kill him and take her. He feared that they had no respect for God and would do as they please.
Abraham’s lie did not help one bit, it created problems for the King’s household. Abraham had to confess and allow God to fix the situation.
Our natural mind has to be daily trained to think in the spiritual. God already promised Abraham a seed, he knew it was not the child he had with his Maid and he knew the seed would come from Sarah. But, here he is fearing death. Didn’t Abraham realize he needed to be alive for God’s purpose to be executed?
I am happy that even though we are bent towards doing our own thing, we have the means to resist and give in to God’s plan for our lives.
