Monthly Thought

August 2008

So...a thought for the month!!

I do a Bible study with the wife of my pastor here in Wisbech every Monday morning. So far, over the last year we have been working through Genesis, makes sense to start at the beginning right?!

Well we are now up to about chapter 21 which looks at Abraham and the birth of Isaac, the long awaited son! Up to this point God has been promising Abraham that his descendents would be as numerous as the stars in the sky (Gen 15). On several occasions God confirms this promise (Ch 17:4, 18:10). Even though Abraham and Sarah are now a bit passed it, God is still powerful enough to enable Sarah to become pregnant.

Abraham had all these promises from God and in Hebrews 11 it speaks of Abraham’s faith and that he was able to have a have a child at this age because of this faith. If you read through Genesis from the first calling of Abram to the birth of his son, Isaac, you will see that Abraham messes up again and again. He even has a child with Sarah’s servant girl, taking matters into his own hands, thinking this might be the way God intended for him to have children even though God had promised that Sarah would have a baby! Abraham seems to lack in faith when you see just how often he acts on his own without trusting God for guidance.

You might be wondering where I’m going with this!! The thing that really gets me is that Abraham is always described as being faithful to God, something that I always imagined to mean he rarely messed up and always looked to God in every little thing, trusting God in every situation. No matter what!! An impossible ideal! Not even the most faithful of people gets through life without ever messing up, without doubting or acting in their own strength.

So then, what makes a faithful person?? Well, going back to Hebrews 11, ‘faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.’ That’s the short answer! A faithful person is one that despite messing up (we all do, we are human after all!) they still know through those times that God is there and that ultimately they want to follow him and be who He has made them to be. Even if sometimes they doubt they always come back to God.

So even Abraham had his moments! This is not to say that we can just mess up all the time and it will be fine, we still need to strive to look to God in all we do and to try and be the best that we can for Him, after all that is part of faith! It’s not easy, but we were never told it would be! But learning to rely on God is an interesting journey!

Rachael