Do we often find ourselves questioning the plans and promises God has for us? When God’s timing doesn’t line up with our timing, do we wait patiently for his plan or try and take hold of the situation to try to achieve the desired outcome in our timing?
God promises Abram that his inheritance will go to his own seed and his descendants will be as numerous as the stars. Abram believed the Lord but was concerned the inheritance he would leave would go to his servant, rather than a biological child he doubted he and Sarai would be able to have. So, God further assures his promise with a sacrificial covenant and a dream showing his descendants inheriting his land over 400 years later. About 13 years after the sacrifice and dream, the fulfilment of the promise begins with the birth of Abram’s son Isaac.
Like Abram in the text, I often find myself believing in the promise but still asking God for proof of the promise. (Genesis 15:8) I like to see the big picture at the beginning. To know what God is going to do in my life and when His promises will come to fruition. And even if God showed me, at times I would still find myself struggling to believe it in my personal situation. We can see the faith and obedience it takes to believe and wait for God’s promises over time. But even though our timing isn’t His, we know they will come to pass, and He always keeps His word.
What is a promise God has made to you? Are you finding it challenging to wholly believe it and why?
-Jackson Taylor
Genesis 15:1–21 (MEV)
1 After this the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, “Do not fear, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward.”
2 But Abram said, “Lord God, what will You give me, seeing I am childless and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?”
3 Abram said, “Since You have not given me any children, my heir is a servant born in my house.”
4 Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, “This man will not be your heir, but a son that is from your own body will be your heir.”
5 He brought him outside and said, “Look up toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” And He said to him, “So will your descendants be.”
6 Abram believed the Lord, and He credited it to him as righteousness.
7 He also said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess it.”
8 But Abram said, “Lord God, how may I know that I will possess it?”
9 So He said to him, “Bring Me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.”
10 Then Abram brought all of these to Him and cut them in two and laid each piece opposite the other, but he did not cut the birds in half.
11 When the birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.
12 As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram, and terror and a great darkness fell on him.
13 Then He said to Abram, “Know for certain that your descendants will live as strangers in a land that is not theirs, and they will be enslaved and mistreated for four hundred years.
14 But I will judge the nation that they serve, and afterward they will come out with great possessions.
15 As for you, you will go to your fathers in peace and you will be buried at a good old age.
16 In the fourth generation, your descendants will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”
17 When the sun went down and it was dark, a smoking fire pot with a flaming torch passed between these pieces.
18 On that same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great Euphrates River—
19 the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites,
20 the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaites,
21 the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.”