Today, we are going to look at the life of the father of Israel, Abraham. A man credited with incredible faith and revered for his place in our heritage. Even so, he was still a man and like us, he made his share of mistakes.
What's interesting is that Abram (as he was originally named) didn’t grow up in a godly home or have a great spiritual influence. He didn’t start with the makings of being the great patriarch of Israel. In fact, Abram came from a godless home in a wicked nation. Not much to start with, which appears in the Bible to be the type of person that God loves to use in a mighty way!
We first learn about him in Genesis 12 as God calls Abram to the faith. He is living in Haran with his family when God reveals Himself and commands him to go to a new land. God is calling Abram to sever his ties—the comfort that he had clung to for so long—and take a faith journey into the unknown. Yet five times, God says "I will” in the first three verses of the chapter., indicating that Abram would not travel alone.
Over the years, Abram followed God's instructions, usually never knowing what the next step would be. And in that, his faith grew leaps and bounds through the various trials. However, there were a few bumps along the way.
Not long after Abram stepped out to follow God, a famine hit the land he was in, and so he decided to take his family to Egypt, where food was plentiful. The Bible is clear when God spoke to Abram, but this is not one of those moments. We never see God tell Abram to go, so it's believed that Abram made that decision on his own. Perhaps out of fear and uncertainty, Abram decided to move his family to a wicked nation. This was his first step down a dangerous path, showing us that when we decide to make decisions based on our own wisdom, we are now entering dangerous waters.
One of the issues with depending on our own resources, is that this choice can quickly become a habit. That was also true for Abram. His wife, Sarai, was very beautiful, and Abram was afraid that he would be killed by the men in Egypt who would desire his wife. So, out of fear, he devised a plan to go into Egypt pretending to be brother and sister instead of husband and wife. Abram was afraid of men, not dependent upon God, (and stop me when any of this sounds familiar . . . ) and he based his decisions on his perception of his situation and not on the power of God.
And it worked out, in a way. Abram wasn't killed, but the men of Egypt did find Sarai attractive, and she was taken into Pharaoh's harem.
This is where God intervened in the situation and created an opportunity for Abram and Sarai to leave untouched. Because we serve a great God who treats us with grace instead of the justice we deserve. But like many of us, Abram didn’t learn from his mistake because in Genesis 20, he does the exact same thing, only in a different country.
In between these two lapses of faith, God promised Abram that he would have descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky (Genesis 15). At this time, Abram and Sarai were elderly, and had no children. So based on their perception of their circumstances, Sarai convinced Abram to take matters into their own hands, and Abram slept with another woman to conceive a child. Another failure of Abram’s—he chose to appease his wife rather than trust God’s promise for an heir. In the end, it caused not only great pain within his family, but has had massive repercussions throughout history which persists even in our own time.
Throughout his life, Abram took matters into his own hands when things got tough. He fell back on old habits and made decisions based on fear. And perhaps this is why God rarely showed Abram the next step—to teach him faith. Because the legacy of Abraham, (who God renamed) is that he is known as a man of faith. The man who once habitually reacted in fear, eventually turned to faith in God and His promises.
Most of the time, we, like Abraham, can't see the next step, and it is not always apparent what God is doing. Perhaps you've taken matters into your own hands before, and it didn't work out. This has , unfortunately also been a pattern in my own life. Thankfully, we serve a kind and gracious God who redeems our past for a flourishing future.
If you've tried your own way in the past and it didn't work, you can rest in the assurance that God can right our wrongs and work through our mistakes.
