In This Manner Walk

There was a man.  He would become the father of many nations.  But we meet him unmarried.  He finds a wife; she will stumble kings with her beauty.  He moves away from his family, away from his homeland to a land he does not know.  He takes his nephew with him.  He is faithful to his own.  He will send a servant back to his family in the future.   I do not imagine that leaving was easy.  But God told him to go and where to go and Abram obeyed.  He was promised great things would come from him, that the earth would be blessed by him.  Walking with God is not for the faint of heart but Abram is no ordinary man.  God brought him out under the stars and told him that his decendents would be as the night sky, innumerable.  Abram believes God and it is credited to him as righteousness.  This is a great story!!  It has so many elements of an epic.  It continues in the same fashion.  Abram becomes a mighty prince with great wealth.  Kings make treaties with him.  Kings pay him tribute.  He has an army that is competent to fight against mighty kingdoms.  He is loyal to his family and rescues Lot in a great battle.  He talks with God and even gives advice to the Almighty.  But in all of this, Abram has no heir, no son.  He is old now.  His wife is way beyond the childbearing age.  But again he is promised a lineage.  Abram gets a new name.  Sarai gets a new name.  And they are promised that a year from this appointed time, Sarah will give birth to a son.  His name is to be Isaac.  Abraham is the father of nations.

We are told in Deutoronomy to teach our children about God.  We are told we are to teach them when they wake up, when we are out and about with them in the day, and we are to talk of God when they go to bed.  They are to know this story of Abraham.  They are to know it so that they will walk with God like their father Abraham did.  Abraham is the father of the faithful and we are the faithful.  His story is to guide us, to encourage us, to remind us that we are apart of a greater story.  Do you not see the irony in the above story.  God promised Abraham that a great nation would come from him.  But Abraham has no children.  Generally nations are made of people.  But Abraham believed God.  He believed him again when God tested him and told him to sacrifice his only son.  Abraham got up early and went to the top of a hill and made an altar.  When his only son asked where the sacrafice is, Abraham tells him that God will provide one.  Little did Isaac know that the altar was made for him until his father grabbed him and bound him and put him on it!  But God spoke to Abraham and told him that he had passed the test.  A goat was provided and Isaac was spared.


This story is to be remembered when we walk through times of unrest.  Maybe it is our health that is at war with our flesh.  Maybe it is money troubles.  Maybe it is job transition.  Maybe we have moved or someone we love has moved away from us.  Or, we have lost someone dear.  Abraham walked in faith.  Where is eyes could not see, faith did.  He is our template.  And he is our template because Jesus was his.  Jesus is the ultimate Abraham.  He obeyed His father perfectly.  When things look hopeless, remember Abraham.  When you cannot see how the promises of God will be fulfilled in your life, remember the greater story.  Ask for faith.  Ask for more faith.  And keep on asking!  We are to walk by faith, always.  Why do you wonder at your trail?  Are you not promised trials?  I remember Jesus telling the disciples that trials are apart of following him.  But then we stumble when this promise comes our way.  Jesus says, follow me.  Jesus says that following him comes with trials.  We say, yes we will follow you.  We receive trials.  We wonder what in the world is going on.  Why are things so hard?  Why does it seem that I am having so many hardships?  Wow, it boggles me that the word is so little in us.  Know the word, love the word, go to it and remember the stories.  Remember Abraham, he will point you to Christ.  Remember Joseph as a slave, he will point you to Christ.  Remember Moses cast out of Egypt, he will point you to Christ.  Remember the wanderings in the wilderness, they will point you to Christ.  And the list goes on and on.  Get the right stories in your head.  Teach them to your children.  Bind them in your heart.  Be so full of them that the are the lenses that you see everything through.  And take heart when troubles come your way, for they are promised.  And remember what comes after them and from them..... resurrection life.  Death and resurrection.  Death and resurrection.  Death and resurrection.  This is your pattern.  This is your guide in hard times.  Walk worthy for you are headed somewhere.  You are daughters of the Most High and heirs accordingly.  We are the seed of Abraham, we are the chosen people of God.  We walk in our unrest with certainty of our heavenly citizenship.  This should strengthen us and embolden us.