Against all odds.

Last week we talked about how God is good. This week we are going to look at how God is faithful to keep His word. God keeps His promises. He does not say anything He has no intention of fulfilling. Recently I have been thinking about the story of Abraham. Abraham didn’t just wake up Abraham. He had to go on a journey with God and it took faith for him to be the man that God was calling him to be.

Genesis 12:1-4 says, “Now Yahweh said to Abram, “Leave it all behind —your native land, your people, your father’s household, and go to the land that I will show you. Follow me, and I will make you into a great nation. I will exceedingly bless and prosper you, and I will make you famous, so that you will be a tremendous source of blessing for others. I will bless all who bless you and curse all who curse you. And through you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” So Abram obeyed Yahweh and left; and Lot went with him.”

That is how Abraham’s story started. It started with Him believing God and taking Him at His word. It started with Abraham not trying to figure it all out and asking God for the 5-step plan on how He was going to accomplish all this. Abraham didn’t even ask God for a timeframe of when this would all happen, he just trusted God and He obeyed.

What I find fascinating is that in Genesis 11, we are told the back story to Abraham’s life. Then when it comes to Abraham’s father, Terah, it says this in verses 31 and 32, “Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot, the son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram’s wife, and they all departed together from the Chaldean city of Ur to go into the land of Canaan. But when they journeyed as far as Haran, they settled there. Terah lived two hundred and five years and died in Haran.”

In Genesis 12:7, God says this, speaking of Canaan, “…This is the land I will personally deliver to your seed,” also see the same promise in Genesis 17:8. So Canaan was the promised land. Abraham’s father Terah started the journey to Canaan but stopped and settled along the way. The Bible does not tell us why that is. Further, the Bible is silent on why Terah was headed to Canaan, but could it be that God had spoken the very same thing He spoke to Abraham to his father Terah? Could it be that God had presented Terah with the opportunity to be the father of many nations and he gave up along the way?

Sometimes when God makes us a promise and we begin the journey with Him, it does not look anything like what He has promised us. Sometimes we look at our present circumstances and we are tempted to settle for less than God’s promise or stop short of the promise. Thing is, God likes to take His time and set the scene for the promise. It took some time for Abram to become Abraham. Further, it took many years and many generations for God’s promise to Abraham to come to fruition and parts of it are still being fulfilled.

Acts 3:25 says, “And you are heirs of their prophecies and of the covenants God made with your fathers when he promised Abraham, ‘Your descendant will bring blessing to all the people on the earth.’” The descendant spoken of in this context is Jesus. What a promise! I doubt Abraham ever imagined that the Son of God will one day be his descendant!

Sometimes we give up on God’s promises because our lives along the way look nothing like what we expect, but we have to trust the process. We have to go on the journey with God. We have to obey what He asks us to do and in time, at the right time, we will see God’s promises unfold in ways unimaginable. For God’s word promises in 1 Corinthians 2:9, “…Things never discovered or heard of before, things beyond our ability to imagine —these are the many things God has in store for all his lovers.”

I will leave you with this, Romans 4:16-18 says, “That’s what the Scripture means when it says: “I have made you the father of many nations.” He is our example and father, for in God’s presence he believed that God can raise the dead and call into being things that don’t even exist yet. Against all odds, when it looked hopeless, Abraham believed the promise and expected God to fulfill it. He took God at his word, and as a result he became the father of many nations. God’s declaration over him came to pass: “Your descendants will be so many that they will be impossible to count!”

Against all odds, when it looks hopeless, keep believing the promise and hang on to God’s word. Be convinced that God is good, and that God has every intention of keeping His promises to you.

Love and blessings,

Melissa Tsingano.