Drawing Near to GodНамуна

Day 5: The Force

Read: Genesis 15

“Abram believed the Lord, and he credited to him as righteousness” (Gen. 15:6).

Hear the Gospel: “Abraham believed the Lord, and he credited to him as righteousness” (Gen. 15:6). That is really Good News. God knows how bad we are at the thing we most need to be good at to meet his Holy Standards: Holiness. It pleases him to accept us as Holy when we trust his Promises. Think about such a Truth and you will be bowled over with the Good News. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith” (Eph. 2:8).

Now hear the hard part: faith is forged in delay. A forge is a furnace heated to a white-hot temperature. Metal is thrust into the forge until heat makes it malleable, then it is pounded into shape. God’s forge for our faith is the gap between the giving of his promise and its fulfillment. Faith is forged in delay, but the temptation in delay is to jump out of the forge. The most common way we do this is by becoming “God’s little helpers”—believing we can achieve his ends using our own means.

That’s what Abram is flirting with here. In his day, a childless couple could adopt a slave and make him the heir. For Abram, that man is Eliezer of Damascus. True, God had promised Abram and Sarai a child, but that was when Abram was 75 years old. Time has passed, and they’re not getting any younger, so maybe what God wants is for them to practice a little common sense, a little conventional wisdom, and do the prudent thing.

But God makes it clear once again that he means to give them their own, biological child. Abram believes this and is credited with Righteousness. So far, so good. But one chapter later the childless couple will jump out of the forge and try their own methods again, with disastrous results. The Hagar debacle haunts the whole world to this day.

The hardest thing about Prayer is the waiting. Jesus told his disciples a parable about Prayer so that they would keep on praying and not lose heart. It ended with the question, “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth” (Luke 18:8)? Will we still be in the forge, praying and waiting, our faith being tested and strengthened?

PRAYER: Dear Father, your Timing is Perfect. You make all things beautiful in your Time. Strengthen me to wait and pray with patience and faith.