Plain Vanilla: Patience, Part 2

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

When I re-read last week's excerpt from my Plain Vanilla Files, I noticed that I mentioned that there were *three* applications of patience...and 'don't give up' was the first. So I thought I'd go ahead and do a little three-parter and post the other two applications and the discussion about them, too...so, here's Part 2; Part 3 will be next week.

The second application of patience is that we must deliberately avoid doing anything in our own strength to try and bring the promise to pass. It’s so easy to assume that just because a course of action makes sense to us and seems to be in agreement with what God has said it must be the right thing to do...and go do it.

The key word there is assume. God may intend for us to do something that will lead to the fulfillment of the promise, but He will tell us if that’s the case. In our own reasoning, we invariably will decide on the wrong course of action. Not sometimes; not most of the time; always!

I really don't want to list all the times in my own life I've proven that to be true! Fortunately, I don't have to. I can refer to the Word. The classic example of doing something to bring the promise to pass is the conception of Ishmael. This is another familiar story, and Abraham and Sarah get a lot of bad press over this. Don’t forget – we have the advantage of hindsight. Try to put yourself in their situation. Think how it looked to them.

At the word of the Lord, a 75-year old man and his 65-year-old wife set out from Haran with his nephew and all the servants and livestock they had acquired. The man had no children, despite the ironical fact that his name meant “Exalted Father” (I suspect that, at that time, Abram considered Lot to be his heir). They went to Canaan, where God appeared to Abram and declared, “To your offspring I will give this land.” Abram built the first of many altars that he would build to God and called on His name. It is not recorded what Abram thought about God’s promise here; it may be that seventy-five and sixty-five may not have been quite as unlikely for childbearing then as it would be now. It was a promise, but year after year went by and no children appeared.

They wandered about in Egypt to escape a famine, and acquired a few more servants – including a young woman named Hagar, who became Sarai’s personal maid. After they returned to Canaan, Abram’s servants and Lot’s servants quarreled over who had grazing and watering rights where. Ultimately, the men split up, with Abram going to what later became Hebron and Lot going to what later became smoking dust and ashes. God again promised Abram that he would have offspring that no one could count who would inherit all the land he could see and walk through. Still, no children were born and Abram made his servant Eliezer his heir.

Then, Lot got into trouble when an alliance of Babylonian kings came and carted all the inhabitants of the cities of the Jordan plain – including Lot and his family and possessions – off into captivity. Abram heard about it, raised an army and took off after them. He caught the invaders off-guard, celebrating their victories. Abram and his army completely and utterly defeated them, recovering not only his nephew and his nephew’s household but also all the people and possessions of the towns of the plain. However, he refused to keep any plunder for himself, giving a tenth to the mysterious Melchizedek, portions to the men who had fought as his allies, and returning the rest to the people of the Sodom and Gomorrah region. Abram returned home with nothing to show for his excursion but the knowledge that he’d done the right thing.

But God knew what Abram had done, and He appeared to him again in a vision and promised to be Abram’s “shield and very great reward.” Keep in mind, about ten years had passed since God had begun to talk to Abram about offspring. Abram didn’t want a reward – he wanted sons. The first thing out of his mouth when God promised him a reward was something to the effect of “Well, there’s not much point to that – any reward You give me will be passed on to Eliezer since You haven’t given me any children!” This time, God not only promised Abram offspring as numerous as the stars, He promised Abram a son from his own body. But – go to Genesis 15 and read it carefully and you will see that God does not mention Sarai.

So – can you imagine Abram coming back from this worship experience, elated over what God has told him? Imagine the joy in his face as he tells Sarai about his wonderful worship experience and the marvelous promise God gave him...then imagine the cold knot Sarai feels growing in the pit of her stomach. She didn't hear the voice of God or dream in visions. Finally, she gets brave enough to ask Abram, “Who is going to have this baby?” I can see Abram look at her blankly for just a moment, so she rephrases the question, “Did God say that I would bear this child?” Suddenly, Abram realizes that God was rather vague on that point, and he stammers, “Uh, no, He didn’t say who would have the baby.”

What a blow to Sarai that had to have been! She knew that she was well past the age of childbearing. The possibility of having the child herself was too ludicrous to consider. It was a stretch to believe that Abram would father a child. Sarai could see only two possibilities – either she was going to die, and Abram would remarry and then have children, or Abram was going to take a second wife or concubine. Either way, she would have felt as if she were being set aside as useless.

I don’t know how long she agonized over the situation, or how much she cried as she considered the options, but finally she decided that she would have to sacrifice her relationship to her husband to see God’s promises come to pass. It was the only way she thought she could have any part in fulfilling the promise at all, even though it was a vicarious participation. How long do you suppose it took her to pull her emotions into line enough for her to go to Abram and say, “Abram, since God has prevented me from having children, I have an idea...”?

Now, you have to remember that what she suggested was completely acceptable in that day and time. It was not at all “wrong” according to the moral standards of their culture. In fact, people may have wondered why Abram hadn’t already done something like this. From the Scripture account, many people have assumed Abram jumped at the idea, but the truth is that we don’t know how long it took Sarai to persuade Abram that this was what he should do. But, in the end, he agreed with her. After all, by the conventional standard of the day it wasn’t wrong and it could give Abram the son from his own body that he’d been promised. It made sense. It was logical. They seemed to have assumed it was what they were supposed to do. There’s no evidence that they ever once asked God if this was what He had in mind. There is also no record that God spoke again to Abram until Ishmael was about thirteen.

It’s quite possible that, all that time, Abram really believed Ishmael was the son God had promised him, despite the strife that this decision brought into his household. Unfortunately, the strife was not limited to his household, but has continued for centuries.... All from their earnest desire to bring about God’s promise. Mind you, that desire did not stem from unbelief that God would do what He said, but from their logical thought processes that told them that God would bring about His promise through their human efforts. Sarai, I’m convinced, believed she was making a noble sacrifice. Their motives were right, their faith was unshaken, but their human reasoning (the fatal fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil) was their downfall.

They didn’t bail out of their situation, so they did eventually see the promise come to pass, but Abraham finally had to send Ishmael – the product of his own human effort to bring about God’s promise – away altogether. Think of the sacrifice this was for Abraham! The human efforts ultimately resulted in nothing but separation, pain and generation after generation of bitter conflict.

This should be a major warning to us. Sure, we don’t have the same set of circumstances, but anytime we attempt to bring about the promise of God by doing what seems reasonable, or what makes sense, without a clear word from God to do that, we will be heading off into the same error. Yes, the promise is fulfilled – but how much damage we do in trying to make it happen!

I can’t tell you how hard it is to be patient enough to stay on our faces until we know that we know we have heard from God – and be willing to even give up the promise rather than do anything by our own wisdom to bring it about. Now, God’s promises are always for our good, and they are certainly worth clinging to. But there comes a time when a distinction must be made between the promise that God has given and God’s presence and God’s purpose. God is infinitely more desirable than any promise He gives; His purpose will be fulfilled however He designs to fulfill it. His promises are always kept...but not usually in the way we expect. Therefore, we must desire His presence and His purpose above His promise.

Abraham learned this lesson. When God tested him again, Abraham trusted God. He actually would have killed his son at God’s word, trusting that God would keep his word of blessing Isaac. Do you see that placing Isaac on the altar was essentially the same test in trusting God to fulfill His promise as waiting on him to be born? Perhaps, if Abram and Sarai had not tried to bring about God’s promise themselves in the first place, Abraham would not have had to go through the ordeal of placing his son on the altar. When we fail a test, God does not get angry – He just leaves us with the consequences of our decisions and brings us back to the place where we must take the same test again.

So – don’t give up and don’t get in the way. Keep the Plain Vanilla Testimony that “God promised me something that I still don’t see any reason to believe is going to happen, but I’m going to hang out with Him and wait for Him to do it anyway.” Of course, if God tells you something you need to do, then jump up and do it, even if it seems silly (think of Naaman washing in the Jordan River). Just don’t make the assumption that you have to do something to see God work in your life. “The Lord helps those who help themselves” is a quaint proverb that sounds reasonable to our Puritan work ethic heritage, but the truth is that the Lord helps those who completely put their trust in Him and move in obedience. Those who help themselves by moving in assumption only receive what they've brought about themselves.