Following the Trail of God's Promises: The 40-Day ChallengeSample

14. The Birth of Isaac

Promises for us are often things easily made and broken. I will be there, I will do it - I promise. However, we generally justify a broken promise due to sickness, busyness, forgetfulness and other natural circumstances that can happen. But God has no physical limitations; the laws of nature or circumstance cannot force God to break His promises. And not only are His promises not bound by nature, they are always miraculous.

God promised Abraham that he would have a child with Sarah, despite their old age. Though physically improbable, even impossible, Abraham and Sarah did have a child. God named him Isaac (meaning: he laughs), probably because Abraham and Sarah laughed at the idea of having a child; they could not imagine it happening. God did not change Isaac's name as He did for Abraham and Jacob, but in the New Testament he is referred to as “the son of promise”. Moreover, in Galatians 4:28 it says that we who believe are like Isaac, born of promise. Do we see ourselves as the result of a miracle? We might not have been born in a specific, miraculous way, yet think of how God takes a sinful human heart and cleans it, creating a new heart that can dwell with Him for eternity! Even having a child in old age doesn't seem as impossible or as miraculous as what God has worked in us!