Praying for the Faith of Abraham
“Sing, O barren woman, you who never bore a child, because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband,” says the LORD (Isaiah 54:1).
Scripture insists that God is capable of bringing life out of barrenness. When God came to Abraham, he told him that all human history would be different because of Abraham’s life, that out of Abraham’s descendants would come a lineage that would lead to the redemption of the world. I can imagine Abraham and God’s conversation after God told him that. I can hear Abraham saying, “You obviously aren’t from around here.”
“Oh, really, what do you mean?” God asks.
“If you were from around here, then you would know that when a man is seventy-five and his wife is sixty-five, there is no chance for them to produce a child.”
“That is right; I am not from around here. In the place from which I come, there is One who makes the impossible possible.”
I am sure God has a sense of humor. He made Abraham wait twenty-four years before he started the fulfillment of that promise. How could one get a better illustration of the fact that God is the kind of God who can bring life out of barrenness? God is saying that he is the One who can bring water from a rock, fruit from sterility, life from death. Note the accounts in Judges 13, Samuel I, and Luke I. Samson, Samuel, John the Baptist, and Jesus are all witnesses to what God can do.
God can bring something out of your barren and sterile heart too. If you open your life to him, you will find the unexpected. Out of you will flow living water that will reach a world for his glory. What could be a higher privilege?
—Dennis Kinslaw
This Day with the Master
To have Abraham’s faith! To trust in God to the extent of leaving everything and following God “to a place I will show you” (Gen. 12:1); to strike out with a minimal force of men to rescue his nephew Lot from four kings and their armies (Gen. 14); to reason with God to save the people of Sodom (Gen. 18:22-22); to trust God when He promised Abraham descendants though he and his wife were old (Heb. 11:11-12); and being willing to sacrifice Isaac as God commanded (Heb. 11:13-14). It is no wonder that Abraham is called the ‘father of the faith.’ And it’s no wonder my own faith often feels so feeble in comparison. How about yours? What giants stand before you today? What obstacles and oppositions seem impossible and impassible? “God can bring something out of our barren and sterile hearts” today’s devotion reminds us. Let us pray for the faith to wait, expectantly, to see what our God will yet do on our behalf! —DH
—David Hoskins, Founder & Care Guide, Sanctuary Clinics