A Picture of God’s Guarantee
Abraham and Sarah are gifted a child, after all those years of holding to God’s promise. This is a picture of God’s grace, and it’s also a picture of God’s guarantee. We read “Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him.” (Genesis 21:2 NIV11)
God’s timing is always right. He guarantees to come through at the right time.
This whole Abraham story has been a picture of the struggle to understand God’s timing, hasn’t it? He and Sarah get this promise, and they are sure it’s going to be fulfilled soon. But they wait.
And wait.
And wait.
And the longer they wait, the more they doubt God’s timing!
The Waiting That Shapes Us
Sound familiar? Waiting, and waiting, and waiting for God to come through? For some of us today, this is very close to the bone. We are immensely frustrated that God is not doing what we know He can do in OUR time.
A few centuries after Abraham and Sarah, the Israelite people had drifted from God. They had turned from him and things were not looking good. In the midst of all this turmoil, God sends a prophet named Habakkuk. And the message God gives this prophet is twofold:
First, he is to tell them that they are going to go into exile. Babylon will overtake them, destroying their sacred city, and oppressing them all. But the prophet is also given a message in which God promises to deliver the Israelites out of the Babylonian captivity, and put them back in their land and eventually send a Messiah to make all things right.
Look at what God tells him to say: “For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay.” (Habakkuk 2:3 NIV11)
Though It Linger… Wait for It
Though it linger… wait for it. It will certainly come.
That caught me! Because I’m not much good at waiting for God’s lingering promises to happen! I would much prefer them to happen when I want them to.
Abraham’s story, on the other hand is picture of waiting even though God’s promise was lingering. In fact most of God’s people have had to learn this. David learned it. Look at what he wrote at the end of his famous Psalm 27: “Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.” (Psalm 27:14 NIV11)
Maybe this is the picture you need today. To be strong, to take heart and wait for the Lord because His timing will be right, as it was for Abraham and Sarah. They waited, and waited and waited. God’s promise lingered. But at the right time, God came through. I believe strongly, that the same thing happens in our lives, over and over - because His perfect timing is guaranteed.
