ON THE VANGUARD

A TIME OF PROMISE
“He took him outside and said, ‘Look up at the heavens and count the stars – if indeed you can count them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’ Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness”
Genesis 15:5-6

Abram had the promise. The first time, in Genesis 12:2-3, he was told he would be a great nation, and now in Genesis 15:5-6, he was being told his offspring would be too numerous to count. But as time continued on and his wife continued to be barren, doubt settled in. Sarai, Abram’s wife, came to him with a plan. She had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar. Since God was not allowing her to have children, Sarai told her husband to take Hagar as his wife and build a family through her. In Sarai’s mind, it was a well thought out plan, but it wasn’t God’s plan. Unfortunately, it was this plan that Abram agreed to. Taking Hagar as his second wife, he lay with her and she conceived. From Hagar was born Abram’s first son, Ishmael.
It is important to note that at this point Abram was 86 years old when Ishmael was born. Eleven years had passed since God first spoke His promise to Abram. Eleven years and the plan that Abram worked from was not even God’s plan. Abram had failed in his faith that God would do what He said. Another thirteen years would pass before God would speak with Abram again and begin to move in His plan. At the age of 99, God appeared to Abram and spoke.
“’As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you.’”
Genesis 17:4-6
Abraham, the father of our faith who had just received a third confirmation from God, laughed. It wasn’t a laugh of joy but rather a laugh of ‘are you serious?’ Abraham could not believe that God would now make good on His promise when he was about to turn a century old. Not only that, but Sarai, now called Sarah, wasn’t young herself. Sarah would be 90 years old when the promise would finally be delivered. Yet God said in response to Abraham, “She will bear you a son and you will name him Isaac” (Gen 17:19).
When the time was right, when Abraham placed his trust in God’s ways and not his own, then God brought about His promise. When God’s timing and God’s Word intersect, ‘suddenly’ happens. A ‘suddenly’ was about to happen. Sarah became pregnant and in the very time God had promised, she bore a son which was named Isaac. Abraham’s past attempts were no more than failures.
God had an appointed time and an appointed means for the promise to be birthed. But are we not just like Abraham? Do we not hear a promise and then move on it when the time is not right? What has God told you that you are still waiting for? Has your moment passed, or is God still aligning His time with His Word? Your ‘suddenly’ may not have happened yet, but when it does, it will happen SUDDENLY.