ON THE VANGUARD

SEEDTIME AND HARVEST part 2

“And the LORD said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated from him, ‘Lift up thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward: For all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to the seed for ever. And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth: so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered. Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee.’”
Genesis 13:14-17

Continuing on in our study, I want to bring our attention to the forth principle that I have learned. In reading the above passage we see God give Abram the promise of land and of child. His land would be composed of everywhere he placed his feet, and his offspring would be so numerous that counting them would be impossible. Yet when God gave this promise to Abram, he was a childless old man who had no land to call his own. His physical position didn’t match the promise God had given. Yet he held on to the words of God, for they were life. In this stance lies the forth principle – be prepared for distractions.
I have seen in my own life this principle at work. As I have shared in the past, at a young age it was prophesied over me that I would be a pastor. Once I embraced the calling I began to pursue the training and practice needed for the call. But as I was training for the call, the enemy was at work to steer me from the call. My teenage years were pretty tame, but still I was bombarded over and over with distractions and ultimately an addiction that stayed with me for several years. The addiction was not from God; never did I feel that it was Him testing me. But instead I knew it was the enemy. And why not? The enemy does not want to see us victorious over him.
We must keep in mind that when God gives us a revelation the enemy will send whatever he can our way to nullify God’s word. He did this in my life, bringing about an introduction to pornography soon after God brought His calling to me. And he did this with Abram as well. As we read further in the account of Abram we see that the enemy brought circumstances that caused Abram to doubt God’s word. We even see that Abram took matters into his own hands when working to have a child through Hagar. This child was never the child God intended, but was a result of the enemy sneaking his way in and twisting the prosperity that God intended for Abram. With this picture in mind, I say again that when we receive God’s promise or calling, we must be ready for an attack of the enemy. When we start to act on what God has said, the enemy is right there and ready to sway us off track.
God is faithful. When He speaks, His words come to pass. What He has spoken concerning you will come to pass as well. If not, God would be a liar. That is not His character. So we must understand that we need to be prepared. Just as in war, a soldier receives his orders and knows there is a good chance he will be shot at or somehow detained by the enemy. We must also have this same understanding. Our enemy does not want to see us succeed, so he will work to stop us from getting to the end point that God has promised us. We cannot afford to let him win. We cannot afford to be distracted saints. We must be determined to reach the goal, and we must be prepared for the enemy’s distractions.
On the heels of avoiding distraction comes the next lesson seen in our Genesis 13 passage. This principle may be the hardest yet, at least it seems to always be for me. The fifth principle is the principle of endurance. Although the text doesn’t necessarily state Abram waited and endured, we see in reading the remaining account of Abram’s life that he did. From the time that Abram received the word of God in Genesis 13:16, to the time when Isaac was born in Genesis 21:2, a total of twenty-five years passed. With only a promise of a nation coming from him, Abram had to do something, right? So he did. He endured.
To endure means to continue in the same state without perishing. It means to refrain from giving in and instead stand firm. This explains a great deal of Abram’s life. Although we know that his stance at one point was weakened and with the persistence of his wife he agreed to intimacy with Hagar, for the most part he remained solid and stood firm. Even after the birth of Ishmael, it was another fourteen years before Isaac was born. That was another 14 years of enduring for the promise which God had originally given. I am doing well to endure from breakfast to lunch some days.
But I too have had to, and in many ways am still having to, learn about endurance. I have been given promises from God that have not yet come to pass, and I see my Abram characteristics in my season of enduring. As I shared earlier, it was prophesied over me that I would be a minister. I received this word around age ten. Currently I am 37. I have been holding on, enduring, and standing firm on God’s words now for about 27 years. And in those 27 years, like Abram, I have had many times when I could have given up on the promise and let it go. I could have dropped the promise when job offers didn’t come to me, when my divorce happened, or when my mistakes cost me my job. Honestly, though, there have also been times when I did drop it, just as Abram did. Yet even though all the ups and downs in those years, I have remembered God’s promise and have found myself fighting back to not allow the current circumstances to override the promise God has given me any longer. I have chosen to endure, and as such I have the faith that what God promised He will deliver on. My personal choices may delay His timing, but His promise still remains.
God does not want us to be double-minded. This is an easy trap to fall into when we do not see life happening as quickly as we think it should. When Abram gave in to his wife’s offer concerning her slave, he gave into double-mindedness. He believed God at one point but then began doubting God the next. Friends, let us not fall into this trap. Yet still I offer this encouragement from Abram’s life. Abram got right again. Abram saw his error and changed his trust in God. With this change he was able to endure till the true appointed time when the promise first given was birthed. This can be our story as well. Perhaps we have dropped our promise – then let us pick it back up again and endure to the end. The seed of endurance is harvested with the promise made manifest in due time.