Read: Matthew 25:14-30
Behold, I send the Promise of My Father upon you.
Luke 24:49a
When God reveals something to us, which is potentially life changing, often our response can be one of two things, we embrace it with excitement, or we resist it out of fear of the unknown.
When God gave Abram the promise to bless him in such a way that even his name would have to be changed. From Abram meaning, ’exalted father’ to Abraham, meaning, ‘father of many nations’. But there was a huge condition attached and several major obstacles to it. Firstly, the condition was that Abram had to move his family, not just to another city, but lock, stock and barrel, to a new country. To a land that he not only had no knowledge of, but to where God said he would reveal in due course, once he had begun the journey in faith.
The obstacles, well they seemed even more incredible. There was Abram’s age to start with, he was 75 years old at this point and was married to Sarai who couldn’t bear children, so exactly how would or even could God do what he said?
The reality was that this was the start of Abram’s journey of total reliance upon the God who created the universe and who was placing before him a series of challenges, to see if and how he would respond.
As is the case with anything God asks of us, it always requires a first step of faith. He always wants to see if we will we lean into Him, even if we don’t understand the ultimate result, of even how to get there.
Abram was obedient and took that first step, literally, by moving his family north, from the familiarity and safety of Ur to a place called Haran and then later after his father died there, on to Canaan, his ultimate destination and inheritance.
The obstacles, well, there wasn’t much that Abram could do about his age, or his wife’s fertility, so he would have to let God sort that out. Much later in the story, however, we read of how we can suffer significantly if we interfere with what is God’s responsibility by taking matters into our own hands to trying to circumvent His purposes through impatience or lack of faith.
Ultimately, God will have His way and part of our journey of faith is to fully let go of our trying to be in control and hand it over to Him. Sometimes that’s easier said than done. In Abram’s case, the fulfilment of being a blessing to all nations, came twenty-five years later through his miracle son, Isaac. Even after Issac was born, God tested Abram once more, this time to the absolute limit, but it was through this ancestral line that Jesus would eventually be born.
