Click… click… click… click…

Hear that? It’s the roller coaster nearing the top of the first hill. We’ve been slowly making our way through these opening chapters of Genesis; this foundational book is crucial for understanding the rest of the “pieces”… and now we’re going to PLUNGE through the rest of the story. Double check that buckle – fastened in tight? Good – here we go!!!!!!

So, a recap in a paragraph: God created this world perfectly, beautifully. He created Adam and Eve in His own image, walked in perfect communion with them, and commissioned them to rule over His creation as His stewards. Sin marred it all – it broke their relationship with one another, their relationship with God, even the harmony of the creation itself. Even in Eden, God promised them that one day a Redeemer would come – and for the rest of human history a choice would be made by every individual: to believe, or not believe. Abel believed, and obeyed. Enoch believed. Noah believed, Abram believed – and God began to reveal a bit more about the coming redeemer. God handpicked Abram and set him apart as His own. Abram, elderly and childless, would have a son in the twilight of his life. His family would become a great nation, placed in a land of their own, and through this nation the Redeemer would come. These people would be God’s chosen people – and much of this story will be about them as we go forward. God is the Creator in Genesis 1, the Redeemer promised in Genesis 3, the Judge in the flood, the only One worthy to be made famous in the Tower of Babel, the Promise Keeper in the life of Abraham.

It really is all about Him.

The rest of Genesis is focused in on the family of Abraham as the lineage and early history of God’s chosen people begins to unfold. God reiterates the promises to Isaac, and again to Isaac’s son Jacob. Eventually, Abraham’s lineage looks like this:

Jacob was a whole bundle of mess. He lived much of his life as a manipulating deceiver. His two wives (who were sisters, by the way), were constantly vying for his affection and attention by trying to out-birth one another. Between them and their servants who were also used as surrogates, Jacob ended up with twelve sons. Not surprisingly, this did not make for a good family dynamic. Four women. Twelve sons. Favoritism. Distrust. Manipulation. Hatred between siblings to the point where they plotted to kill one of their own brothers. {more on that tomorrow.}

It wasn’t until Jacob was well into his life that he seems to genuinely submit himself to God and genuinely place his faith in Him. His family was the evidence of his dysfunctional faith life.

For this reason, I am always struck by these words of Jacob near the end of his life as he blessed his grandsons, the sons of Joseph:

…the God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked,
the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day…

Genesis 48:15

God shepherded him all his life to that very day.

I have had so very many conversations with women in my Bible studies who are 20, 30, 40 or more years older than me. I have seen them weep in regret over the years when their children were young, years when they had not yet bowed their knees to Jesus Christ as Lord, years when they lived in rebellion, years that have marked their families and the lives of their children. They look at me with longing in their eyes and tell me how much they wish that they had walked with God in the early years of their children’s lives.

Our lack of faith, our sin has consequences – in our lives and in the lives of our families. Jacob’s story is a vivid example of that. However, he is also a testament to the fact that God is still able to restore, to work in the lives of our children, to redeem our family history. Jacob’s son Judah was responsible for selling his younger brother into slavery, and later he fathered a child through his daughter-in-law, thinking she was a prostitute. But God redeems Jacob’s life and brings him to faith. God also redeems Judah’s life – and eventually makes him an effective leader, and the one through whom Jesus Himself would one day come.

The sins of Jacob (who God later renames “Israel”) show up again and again in the nation that would come through him. But God is a God who redeems. He is faithful when they are faithless. He is constantly pursuing them, constantly wooing them. He is their shepherd – the Good Shepherd.

If you have a story like those I described above, your life is never too far gone for God to redeem it. No matter how destructive your choices were, no matter the scars your family may bear – God will forgive, God can restore, God is able.  He has called you back to Himself, and He can pursue your children just as He pursued you. He has been your shepherd all your life to this day – and nothing is out of His hands.

If you’ve missed anything in the One Summer, One Story series, you can find all the posts indexed here! Also, if you would like more lessons from the life of Jacob, I have been sharing a four-part series over at Scripture Dig this week! Join us today?

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This world is not our home.

If there is a passage of Scripture that poignantly makes this point to me, it is Genesis 23.

Sarah lived to be a hundred and twenty-seven years old. She died at Kiriath Arba (that is, Hebron) in the land of Canaan, and Abraham went to mourn for Sarah and to weep over her.

Then Abraham rose from beside his dead wife and spoke to the Hittites. He said, “I am an alien and a stranger among you. Sell me some property for a burial site here so I can bury my dead.”
Genesis 23:1-4

Abraham wasn’t just dealing with the loss of his wife he had been married to for nearly a century. He had followed God in faith for years, wandering without a place to call his own, believing in God’s promise that one day his descendents would be a great nation in a land God would give them. And now, he found himself without even a plot of land where he could bury his beloved wife.

An alien and a stranger indeed.

Hebrews 11:11-16 speaks to this very scene:

By faith Abraham, even though he was past age—and Sarah herself was barren—was enabled to become a father because he considered him faithful who had made the promise. And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.

All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

They did not receive the things promised.

They saw them only from a distance.

They weren’t longing for what they left behind in Ur… they were longing for their real Home.

You know the old saying, “home is where your heart is?” One question today: where’s your heart? Are you longing for heaven, or are you a dedicated citizen of this world?

If you’ve missed anything in the One Summer, One Story series, you can find all the posts indexed here!

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We human beings have a chronic condition, a family trait common to the entire human race: faith amnesia. Even when we have believed God and trusted Him wholly in the past, once He provides what we needed, we have a tendency to transfer our faith from the giver to the gift.

I wonder about what Abraham’s relationship was like with Isaac – the source of their laughter. Abraham had waited 100 years to have this child with his beloved wife Sarah. They had waited 24 of those years after receiving a promise from God Himself that an heir would be born. Abraham had learned to believe God through years of wandering, not knowing where he was going – believing in a promised land that would not be his during his lifetime, believing that a nation would come through a son who was not yet born and whose birth seemed impossible, believing in a Promised One who was thousands of years removed from his own life.

I wonder if, holding baby Isaac in his arms, his faith was both strengthened and… misplaced. It would have been so easy to begin looking to Isaac as the one who would fulfill God’s promises – instead of looking to God as the One who would fulfill the promises. I don’t know if Abraham struggled with that – but I think I would have. And I think God’s unexpected and shocking command would have completely rocked my world.

Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!”

“Here I am,” he replied.

Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.”

Genesis 22:1-2

I just cannot fully fathom it. What was Abraham feeling? Did he tell Sarah where they were going? Did he sleep that night? We don’t know. All we know is this:

Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about.

Genesis 22:3

As he had done more than thirty years before… Abraham left. He obeyed God without a clue how the events before him would unfold. We don’t know what all he was thinking and feeling, but the book of Hebrews tells us this:

By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death.

Hebrews 11:17-19

Isaac was the promised son. They had waited a quarter of a century for his birth, and this shriveled elderly couple had laughed and cried and rocked a miracle child in their arms. On that crushing day when God said, “Abraham, go sacrifice Isaac on the mountain,” Abraham is not being tested to reveal his loyalty or the depth of his love. His faith was being tested. His faith in God as the promise-keeper. The question he had to have been pondering on this long and painful journey up to the mountain with his son was this: If Isaac is killed, can God still fulfill the promises?

This passage in Hebrews 11 is incredible – notice that it says, “Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead.” This is Genesis 22. Abraham had never heard of anyone being raised from the dead! His faith in God’s trustworthiness as the Promise Keeper had grown to the point that he believed in the core of his being that even if he had to kill Isaac and burn him to ashes on that altar, that God, in His mysterious and wonderful ways, would somehow make Isaac whole once again… and together they would walk back down that mountain.

One little word in Genesis 22 underlines this thought:

On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”

Genesis 22:4-5

WE will come back. Somehow, someway – God is going to keep His promises. It’s not about Isaac fulfilling the promises, it’s about God as the Promise Keeper.

Sometimes, God will take us to the mountain – He will allow us to struggle with this: do I really believe Him? Do I believe HE is good, or do I simply love His good gifts? Do I believe HE is my provider, or have I made His provision my idol? Is it really all about God after all? Do I believe He is who He says He is?

Have you struggled with faith amnesia? Has God called you to “go to the mountain” in faith?

Around the web with Kristi… I’m all over the place this week!

• Join me at Kristine McGuire’s blog, Kristine ReMixed – God loves you too much to leave you content in your self-sufficiency.
• Join me at Laura Krokos’ blog, Beholding Glory, as I consider what it means that God’s name is “Jealous.”
• Join me at Scripture Dig as we think about what we really want – do we want God, or just the good “stuff” He gives us?

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Our God delights in doing the impossible.

It seems to me that one of the reasons why God does not often operate according to my timetable is that my timetable does not require faith. My time table is reasonable… comfortable. My timetable does not cause me to rely solely on God and God alone.

Several years ago, NP was suddenly and unexpectedly out of work. We had no income, very little savings, a house we had purchased three months earlier, and a nine month old baby. At the beginning of this time we figured that we could survive financially for about three months. God provided an interview for a new position within two weeks; we rejoiced and praised Him, expecting that He would spare us from months of depleting every penny we had! …And then we waited for almost four months for that job to actually be offered to NP. God didn’t just leave us in our circumstances for a little while – He pushed us past what we could handle. Without that extra month of waiting, we never would have known what it was like to have God provide checks to cover our mortgage payments and other bills, groceries delivered in direct response to prayer, provision in so many ways. He was all we had left – and He was enough.

Those months were horrible. And delightful. We had to rely on God and God alone – and His presence in our lives was tangible.

In Genesis 17, we meet up with Abram again. When God first called him out of Ur, he was 75 years old (Genesis 12:4). Abram is now 99. He had a son through Hagar, but was still waiting for the promised son who was still yet to come. In this chapter, God reiterates the promises He had originally made to Abram, and then changes his name to Abraham which means “father of many.” But that wasn’t all.

God also said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you are no longer to call her Sarai; her name will be Sarah. I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.”  Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, “Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?”

Then God said, “Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac.”

Genesis 17:15-17, 19

Abram was not alone in his laughter.

Then the LORD said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.”

Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, which was behind him. Abraham and Sarah were already old and well advanced in years, and Sarah was past the age of childbearing. So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, “After I am worn out and my master is old, will I now have this pleasure?”

Genesis 18:10-12

From the time God had first promised them a son, they waited an additional twenty four years. They were not young when this journey of faith started, but God had them wait until it was utterly ridiculous to think that they would be able to have a child. Twenty-four years!

God waited until it was so obvious that this was no natural birth – this was the hand of God and God alone.

It was so unbelievable it was laughable. And so, God named this miracle child Isaac, meaning “laughter.”

God’s plans for our lives are often impossible. Laughable. They push our faith to the limits. Because His desire is not for our comfort, our happiness – He wants to make us holy and to make His name great in our lives. Have you ever laughed in delight and disbelief over God’s unexpected plan?

If you’ve missed anything in the One Summer, One Story series, you can find all the posts indexed here!