It can only ever be a mistake to try to do God’s job for Him. I am a great try to fix it person, lots of my job involves being ‘solution focussed’ and often I’m guilty of trying to run ahead and I often fall over!

God will not give His glory to another! Abram’s following is completely blind faith because (unlike us) he had no story or pattern to stick to, no knowledge about God that had been handed down, just a sense that HE was there. Yahweh’s presence and voice are all Abram has: a sense, a voice, a promise, that’s why everywhere Abram goes he builds an altar to the LORD. But now he’s experienced the Covenant cutting between God and man – another re-establishing of the Eden relationship, a certainty that this wandering is not just wandering…. because there’s this voice.  And, most of the time, Abram believes that the voice, the call, the command will come again.  But how hard must it be to wait when you are getting older and older and the situation is still the situation.  Although this is just one chapter later, we don’t know how much time has passed.

It doesn’t say ‘Abram obeyed God and it was credited as righteousness’ BUT that he believed Him. He makes mistakes, but he believed God.

Abram doesn’t get judged or destroyed for the situation he and Sarai make for Hagar and Ishmael, but more magically, more graciously, more perfectly the covenant promise of blessing and protection comes to anyone and everyone who are connected to this God, this voice, this Presence, including Hagar and Ishmael.  It’s almost as if we can’t NOT be blessed by a connection to Him. So that the union of Abram and Hagar and the arrival of Ishmael must be included in the blessing, because that’s what Yahweh is like.

O again, how fast I forget this! That the blessing of life in Christ is something that overflows and can impact, soak and soak into EVERYTHING.  This is what Abram’s Descendent bought with his broken body and spilled blood (that bread and wine): the letting loose again of that presence, that voice, that power into my life HE passed between life and death, sin and hell, darkness and light for me! So that the blessing of Abram might be for me.

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Thank you, Lord Jesus, that You have done it all.  That there is simply NOTHING we can do to add to Your great work of salvation.  We simply need to believe You.  We simply need to thank You. Help us wait for You.  Help us be still and wait for You.