Life
Lessons: Obedient Faith
Genesis
12:1-20
SITUATION: God
promised Abram that many nations would come from his descendants. Abram
believed God and obediently moved to an unknown land.
OBSERVATION:
Although old, Abram left his comfortable life in Ur with only the Lord’s word
as a guide. The life changes that he experienced were undoubtedly difficult,
but he persevered through the difficult times.
INSPIRATION: A man
once found a cocoon of an Emperor moth and kept it with the purpose of watching
the beautiful creature emerge. Finally the day came and it began to struggle
through the small opening at one end of the cocoon. The struggle continued for
hours, but the moth could never force its body beyond a certain point.
Finally believing that something was wrong
and that the opening should have been larger, the man took a pair of scissors
and carefully clipped the restraining threads. The moth emerged easily, and
crawled out onto the windowsill. Its body was large and swollen, its wings
small and shriveled. He supposed that in a few hours the wings would develop
into the beautiful objects that he had expected. But it did not happen. The
moth that should have been a thing of great beauty free to float and fly, spent
its short life dragging around the swollen body and shriveled wings.
The constricting threads and the struggle
necessary to pass through the tiny opening had been God’s method of forcing
fluids from the body into the wings. The “merciful” snip of the threads was the
cruelest thing possible.
Often God lets us struggle rather than
stepping in like a big brother to do our fighting for us. No doubt he could
make it all so easy and every moment of life so pleasant. But as we struggle,
becoming exhausted almost beyond endurance, changes occur in us which could not
happen otherwise: the “fluids” expand our wings, and in time we are able to
fly. Cut the struggle short at some crucial point and we are crippled forever .
. . or until God gives another opportunity for struggle that will do what the
first aborted struggle should have been allowed to do.
APPLICATION: Are
you experiencing a painful restriction on your lifestyle right now: a broken
relationship, a betrayal of trust, a budget squeeze, some debilitating illness,
jail time or some other discipline from the Lord? Can you see the plan God may
have for you, turning evil into good—as he did for Abraham? Face your struggle
courageously and patiently; God may be using it to prepare you for his promised
land.
EXPLORATION:
Obedient Faith: Genesis 22:2-3; Deuteronomy 26:16; Joshua 1:8; 11:15; 1 Samuel
15:22; John 14:31; Acts 5:29.
CHRIST
through THE BIBLE
Jesus:
Grace Before the Cross
Abram was far from perfect. There were
times when he trusted the Egyptians before he trusted God. He even lied,
telling Pharaoh that his wife was his sister. But Abram made one decision that
changed his eternal life: He “believed God, and God accepted [Abram’s] faith,
and that faith made him right with God” (Romans 4:3).
Here is a man justified by faith before
his circumcision (v. 10), before the law (v. 13), before Moses and the Ten
Commandments. Here is a man justified by faith before the cross! The
sin-covering blood of Calvary extends as far into the past as it does into the
future.
Abraham is not the only Old Testament hero
to cast himself upon God’s grace. . . . We must not see grace as a provision
made after the law had failed. Grace was offered before the law was revealed. Indeed, grace was offered before man
was created! “You were bought, not with something that ruins like gold or
silver, but with the precious blood of Christ, who was like a pure and perfect
lamb. Christ was chosen before the world was made, but he was shown to the
world in these last times for your sake” ( 1 Peter 1:18-20).
