Other books like this one have become my favorite books to read and reread: Pullinger's Chasing the Dragon, Brother Yun's The Heavenly Man, McClung's Living on the Devil's Doorstep, & Baker's Always Enough to name a few. I love these books because they are the stories of men and women of today that dare to believe God....even when all reason was stacked against them.
When I read the accounts of the lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph I walk away with the same encouragement. It is good to believe God even when it is the most unreasonable thing to do.
God makes a promise to Abraham when he is 75 years old, and Abraham believes. God promises to make Abraham into a great nation through which all the nations of the earth will be blessed. Years later he speaks again, "I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth."
11 years go by and Abraham does not even have one son. In Sarai's impatience and desperation, Ishmael is born to Hagar as another option. But the promise isn't for Ishmael.
13 years latter God renews the promise. The promise of a son.
It is so hard to believe that God would choose to make a man into a great nation and wait so long to begin.
Finally at the age of 100 Abraham and Sarah have Isaac. Abraham could have had 20 sons by now ensuring the family line but instead God gives only one to whom the promise belongs. (That seems a bit unreasonable to me).
After Sarah's death Abraham has a second wife Keturah and they have 6 sons....none of these would become heir to the promise. His son Ishmael had 12 sons....none of these grandsons would become heir to the promise. Abraham had other sons of concubines (Gen 25:6) ....none of these became heir to the promise.
For 100 years Abraham believed God's promise- that he would become a great nation, that God would establish him in the land and that all the nations of the earth would be blessed through him. He believed God when God told him that He would do this through Isaac. And in the end Abraham sends away (to the east) at least 31 sons and grandsons. And "Abraham left everything he owned to Isaac (Gen 25:5)". At the time of Abraham's death Isaac only has two 15 year old sons. It takes a lot of faith in God to do what Abraham did.
So often faith will ask us to send away all the other 'blessings' of God in order to lay hold of the one promise he has spoken to us. And so often when God says "give everything you own to this 'one' " It seems to be the most unreasonable thing to do.
In Loren's book he tells the story of his two very wealthy aunts that offer him a place in the family business. They try to persuade him to give up his ministry nonsense in exchange for extreme wealth and prosperity. But even extreme wealth and prosperity did not persuade him to neglect the promise and vision God had put in his heart. It wasn't an easy choice. It took faith.
And I don't think it was an easy choice for Abraham to look on Ishmael and his 12 sons and know they weren't chosen by God to inherit the promise.
And I don't think it was an easy choice for Abraham to look on the 6 sons born to him in his old age to Keturah and realize they weren't chosen by God to inherit the promise either.
It definitely makes me wonder if I am willing to "send away" or walk away from the things that may be good things, may even be blessings, but fall short of the promise God has for me. Have I allowed 31 other things to crowd out the One Thing God is asking me to give everything I have towards? Do I have the faith to believe God when doing so goes against all reason?
In the last chapter of my life will someone be able to write of me, "She gave everything she owned to Jesus...the heir of the Abrahamic covenant, through whom all the peoples on earth will be blessed... The Son of God....even when reasonable people tried to talk her out of it, AND she had other options." ???
Thought this was a fitting quote to end with (now that I get what he was saying):
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