You know when you just hear one of those messages that makes you resonate with joy because the truth of what is being said finally makes something ungraspable graspable? That was me on Sunday. I've been doing this Bible study about believing God. Believing what He says about us, His children, Himself, His power, His word, and I discovered that I approached His truths the way I do everything else. With skepticism. It seems to good to be true that we can speak and move mountains simply because we believe. Or that He loves us, loves me, enough to die. That I am forgiven, redeemed, accepted, adopted. Who else in my life has demonstrated any of that? My mom drank herself out of life and I don't know my father. My husband of thirteen years but partner and best friend for twenty is dead.
While preaching on Abram on Sunday our Pastor brought up some points that I've known for years, but heard with a believing heart and spirit changed something inside of me. God gave clear directive to Abram, yet in his humanity his trust was limited to his fear, and so for fifteen years he was not where he was supposed to be. Yet did God forsake him? Did God's love for him falter? Abram entered Egypt, allegorically the "world". and while there allowed his circumstances to cause him to doubt and fear. His fear then distorted the truth. The only way Abram got back on track was to return to the place, the alter, where God had revealed Himself. Once he called upon the name of the Lord his distortions became clear visions of what he was to do. Did he obey completely? Those who know the story know that he did not. He was to leave everyone, but took Lot. Even so, God loved Him, God used him, and God blessed him.
I have heard this story from the pulpit many times, but never before with the focus being from God's point of view. Held up as an example, Abram's story has been used to demonstrate the consequences for disobedience, or partial obedience. But for the first time I saw the amazing love of God in Abram's flawed faith. And I believed.
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