**Reposted from September 7, 2010**
For the past few weeks I have come across people, myself included, who have every reason to feel like God has forgotten or failed them, but as I went back and looked at this blog from 2010, I received a new burst of faith to trust God! There are actually three posts in the series, starting with the one shared earlier this week...Trusting God. As I read these posts again, I felt compelled to share them with you all. I hope that you are blessed by them!
When we first meet Abraham, he is not some strapping young boy itching to go out and conquer the world! He was in fact, seventy-five years old. From the beginning of their relationship, God made Abraham many precious promises and the scripture says that Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Simply by believing that God was who He said He was and that He would do what He said that He would do, Abraham was deemed righteous. This always amazes me. I think about this man who at seventy-five years of age received a promise that he and his sixty-five year old wife would become parents and he believed God. Even when it took twenty-five years for this promise to come to pass, the bible tells us that Abraham staggered not at the promise. Are you kidding me? There are promises that I have received from God and I'm no where near twenty-five years in my waiting yet there are days that I feel myself begin to stagger! Sometimes I wonder if Abraham is up in heaven shaking his head at staggering, untrusting me. Abraham was obviously some special brand of person right? No, not really! Abraham was a man who was able to see the promise in the light of the God who was making the promise. He did not minimize God while maximizing his limitations. Abraham did not focus on--"I'm seventy-five, my wife is sixty-five and we've never been able to conceive a child! How on earth can this happen for us now?" We don't hear Abraham complaining at the five, ten, twenty year marks as he waited on God. Abraham knew that the God who promised could be trusted to keep His promise. At the end of his twenty-five year wait, Abraham at 100 years old fathered a son with his ninety year old wife Sarah! What joy *sigh* life is good!! Wait a minute, not so fast. Just as the elderly parents were settling into domestic bliss with their young son, God asks Abraham to trust Him once again. This time, He was asking for Abraham's son Isaac. God asked Abraham to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice. Can't you see Abraham's shoulders slump, and just imagine what he must have been thinking..."not again!" Yet Abraham gathered his son, his knife and the wood for the fire and set out to offer this sacrifice to God. You're probably thinking as I am, "I'll bet he staggered then." Nope, not Abraham. As they made their way to the place where they would make their sacrifice, Isaac questioned his father, "I see the wood, but where is the sacrifice?" Abraham's response, "God will provide the sacrifice." And what does God do? Just as Abraham raised his knife to kill his son, the Angel of the Lord called out and stopped him. Abraham looked and God had in fact provided a sacrifice in the form of a ram. Why on earth would God make Abraham wait twenty-five years for a son then ask him to offer that son as a sacrifice to Him? The answer is really kind of simple. God loves us so much that there is nothing and no one that He would not give for us. John 3:16 tells us, " For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life." God wanted Abraham and us to know that He is prepared to do anything to have us with Him forever because He loves us so much; and what He asks of us is that we love Him so much that we are willing to trust Him with every single thing in our lives. When we magnify things in our lives, job situations, family situations, whatever the case, we are not trusting God and therefore we are not loving Him. We don't have to be spiritual giants when we get into a tough place in our lives. We just have to look at our tough place in the light of who our God is. Can you trust God with your physical health? Absolutely! Can you trust Him with your finances in these troubled economic times? Without a doubt! Can you trust Him with your children, your husband or wife? Without fail! If we learn anything from Abraham's story it should be that we can trust God. There is not a timeline with God, just know that He will keep His promise. There is nothing too hard for God, He will show up in the midst of our situation and bring us peace and provision. That being said, let's take a deep breath, gather our sacrifice and head out--simply trusting that the Lord will provide...whatever!!
Keep looking to the hills dearly loved ones!
Evangelist Carolyn
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