Believing In What You Can Control (Genesis 17-18)

Genesis 17-18

Tangible creatures.  More than anything else, that is what we are.  We may use phrases like, "If you can dream it, you can do it."  But if those results aren't tangible, phrases like that are empty to us...and we know it.  Thus we come to Abraham...a typical guy who believes in God, but like so many of us, only believes what he can see, or at least reasonably control.



Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

As God begins to talk to Abraham, He commands him to a task to show his loyalty and faithfulness.  Now a task, Abraham can handle.

As a matter of fact, I think that most of us can handle tasks well.  I believe that is why our faith, often times, gets reduced to obeying rules and guidelines set out by God.  Obeying rules, no matter how tedious, is easy.  It's tangible.

Don't cuss.  Got it...I'll just watch my mouth more.

Help this person do that task.  No problem...and thanks for the direction.

I think most people would find faith much easier if it were just filled with commands such as these.  Tell me what to do...and I'll do it.

However, faith is so much more than the obedience to commands.  To be sure, it includes that too.  But faith also includes elements that are far out of our control.  And it is at this point that both we and Abraham (at this point in his life), struggle with.

Abraham's wife Sarah was past the childbearing years.  Now God decides that He will bless this faithful couple with a son they have never been able to have.  It was a promise that was out of Abraham's control, and he reacted just as we would.  "Lord, this is never going to happen.  But look, I've already got a son...isn't that the one you promised?  Just bless him.  Let him be that promise.  He's already here.  We've already made it happen."

God would repeat His promise a second time in the presence of Sarah who laughed at the notion of carrying and caring for a child so late in her years.  God told the old couple to name the child Isaac, which means laughter.  Abraham and Sarah probably thought of their reaction to the promise God gave when naming the child.  God probably named him after His own reaction to a faithful couple who still couldn't bring themselves to believe that God could do anything beyond what they had experienced as humanly possible.

God then reveals the judgment on the settlements that Lot was in.  Again Abraham throws his lot in to what he thinks is humanly possible.  He whittles God's initial judgment of 50 righteous men down to only 10.  Surely Lot would have been able to find just 6 more souls, outside of his family, to be righteous in God's sight.  In doing so, Abraham makes the classic mistake of trusting man, in things that he can't see, rather than trusting God.

But we are no different than Abraham really.

Rebellous children.

Serious disease.

Financial situations too big for us to handle.

Uncontrolable death.

Where do we run first? 

We appeal to the children to come home and make every concession, hoping they will see the light.  We run to doctors as our only hope to overcome.  We pull up our bootstraps, get a second and third job, to dig ourselves out of the hole that we created.  We blame God for taking our loved ones away and causing all our suffering and despair to hope that there is anything beyond what we can see. 

When will we learn, that faith is filled with lessons that take a lifetime to learn, chiefest among them is that we must learn to trust God, not just obey him, more than we trust what we can see or do ourselves.