Romans 8:28 says - “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” That’s a great promise, a promise you can build your life on. It is saying that in all situations, in every circumstance of life, God can bring good out of it. It says that God always has our best at heart – ALWAYS! Our job – trust God and believe. Folks that's called faith.
This morning, we’re going to look at Abraham. He was a guy who knew about Romans 8:28, even though it was written thousands of years after he died. He knew in his bones that God had his best at heart, and that God would never burn him.
If you remember, God gave Abraham a promise that he’d have a baby who’d become a great nation which later became the nation of Israel. But Abraham had to wait one hundred years for that baby. That’s a long time to wait. I can’t wait one week very well. We are talking about 5200 weeks of waiting. That’s faith!
One of the most difficult things in life is to sit in God’s waiting room. God's waiting room is when there’s something beyond your control that you can’t speed up – an answer to prayer, a miracle, a change in a situation – you want it to change but it is totally out of your control and you have to wait on God.
The Bible says in Ecclesiastes 3:11 “God does everything just right and on time but people can never completely understand what He’s doing.” Boy, is that the truth! We don’t know always what God is doing and we don’t know when He’s going to do it. What do you do while you’re waiting on God?
The first phase of faith is when God gives you a Dream – an idea, an ambition, a goal. God gives you a dream. And at age 75 God gave Abraham a dream. He said, I’m going to make you into a great nation. But that’s just the start.
Phase two is a Decision. A decision is when you decide to act on that dream. A dream without a decision is worthless. And every dream of God has a risk to it. It has a part where you have to take a step of faith. Abraham had to leave his existing homeland and go to a place he never knew, where he had never heard of, never been there. So he took a risk. When God gives you a dream and says, “This is what I want to do with your life.”, there’s going to come a point when you have to make the decision to say, “OK, God, I’m going to go after Your dream for my life, not my own dream.
Phase three is Delay. A dream is never fulfilled instantly. When God gives you an idea of what He wants to do with your life and when He actually fulfills it there is always a time gap because He wants to grow you. He wants to build you up. Eleven years after God gave Abraham his dream Abraham still didn’t have a child. When he was 86 it says, “But Sarah still had not borne any children.” What’s happened in those eleven years? The answer is nothing. He’s just waiting on God. He’s tempted to doubt, tempted to despair, tempted to take detours. But he doesn’t – he just waits. That’s faith!
Then comes along phase four and that is Difficulty. God not only lets you wait for a while but while you wait He lets you have some problems. Isn’t that fun? So you go through the stage of difficulty where things go from bad to really bad to worse to impossible. And notice that at the age 99 Abraham still did not have a son. He’s 99, his wife Sarah is 89. What’s worse is that God changed Abraham’s name. His name originally was Abram and God changed his name to Abraham which means “Father of a great nation.”
Imagine this: He walks into a 7-11 and the guy says, “What’s your name?” Father of a great nation. “Oh? How many kids do you have?” None. “How old are you?” 99. That’s kind of embarrassing. It’s a test of his faith.
But eventually God fulfills the dream and at age 100 and his wife is ninety, they have a miracle baby. And they name him Isaac which means “laughter”. Because they laughed at the thought. Any woman who really believed God and ninety and told she was pregnant would have cried. But Sarah laughs and God laughs and Abraham laughs and Isaac is named Laughter.
But then comes the most difficult phase of all. Dead end. At Dead end God allows your dream to seemingly die. Abraham was asked to give up the miracle child. God says I want you to sacrifice him back to Me. Get this: Abraham waits a hundred years and has a baby. He starts to grow up then God says, “By the way, now I want you to give him back to Me.
Abraham may have been thinking, “What kind of God is this? Is this a cruel joke? He’s asking me to sacrifice the very dream child that was promised to me.” And he feels pretty hopeless.
How do you know when you’re at a dead end? You feel hopeless. Some of you are at a dead end in your marriage right now. Some of you are at a dead end in getting married. Some of you are at a dead end when you look at your budget, when you look at your career, when you look at your friendships. Some of you are at a physical dead end and your health is falling apart. When you’re at this stage you start to doubt God's wisdom and love and say, “Why is this happening to me?”
Congratulations! God is getting you ready. He is preparing you for the final phase of faith which is Deliverance. The greater the dead end, the more hopeless the situation, the greater the deliverance is going to be, the more of a miracle it’s going to be. You’ll say, “Wow! That was God! Only God could have done that.” So God is getting you ready for a miracle, the miracle of deliverance.
Everybody readin this devotional today – God is going to take you through these six phases of faith many, many times in your life. Then He’ll do it again and then He’ll do it again to keep you growing in your faith. My question to you - will you cooperate?
I love you guys. Stay faithful. Stay the course. ENDURE! (hope to see you in worship this morning)
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