Sorting it out for God

And Abraham said, "Because I thought, surely the fear of God is not in this place; and they will kill me on account of my wife. But indeed she is truly my sister. She is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife. – Genesis 20v11-12

It just seemed to take Abraham forever to get it together. He and Sarah are in their nineties when the travel to Gerar where Abimelech rules. After all this time Abraham’s faith is still weak. He must have thought the world of Sarah’s looks because he was still afraid that someone would kill her to take her away.

So what was his solution? The same thing he did those years ago in Egypt. He said Sarah was his sister in order to protect himself. Once again God intervened to sort out the situation.

I want to focus on Abraham again though. Once again his fear displaced his faith, but this time we get a better understanding of what was going on in his head. He, shall we say, manipulated the truth to suit his purposes and help God out. Technically Sarah was his half sister so he stressed that instead of the fact that she was his wife.

With our 20-20 hindsight we can see the ultimate outcome of Abraham’s testing of faith. We know the promised son is coming. Abraham didn’t. We can see the whole timeline; Abraham could only see his moment in time.

Because he could not see the end he did what we all do far too often, he tried to work things out himself. It is tough to wait on God. It is hard to leave it in His hands. Even as I am typing I am thinking about a couple of situations that I want to fix right now. I can’t see the end so I find myself fretting and anxious. It is almost funny because tomorrow’s message deals with that very situation.

What do we do when we can’t see the end of a situation and there does not look like a good way out? Do we suck it up? Do we wait on God and trust him? Or do we allow our emotions and fears to take control and try to sort it ourselves?

I need today’s lesson. I want to do something. I don’t know what, but I don’t want to sit here and wait for God to do something. Hopefully all of us can learn in times like this that prayer and supplication with thanksgiving is the way to avoid anxiety and fear. Rushing ahead to sort things out for God can always cause problems.