Sojourning With Grace

As I read through a previous blog post, Desensitization of Evil, I began to think of how evil tries to tamp down on good. We all go through similar things that Abraham experienced. Throughout Abraham's journeys, many blockades were thrown up to get in the way of God's promises. At times he was surrounded by idolaters. He could have been influenced by them.

Joshua 24:2 And Joshua said unto all the people, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood (the river Euphrates) in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor: and they served other gods.

These gods could have become his gods just as the influences and images around us today can pull us into their snare. We are surrounded by attitudes, popular objects and fads as well as people, causes, world opinions and many other distracting addicting diversions.  We can be effected in two ways.

First we can be drawn in by them as they take up more and more of our time. If an ideological spin is repeated often enough, it starts to take on authenticity. Lines drawn around truth start to blur and lose importance and suddenly everything dims and becomes mundane.

On the other hand, we can be repulsed by them in an irritating way. This also takes away valuable time in our lives. We can get caught up with indignation and lofty judgements that do us anything but good. Sometimes we just need to pray and walk away and leave it at that.

Genesis12:1 Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee: 2 And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: 3 And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.

Life involves a series of steps. Sometimes we have to deal with hard stuff. Not every step is surefooted and sometimes we lose our balance, but if our trending is toward the right direction we end up in the right place. In Romans 4 we can see that Abraham ended in the right place in his life despite some frustrations, passage of time, missteps, impatience and misjudgments.

Romans 4:19 And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb: 20 He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; 21 And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform. 22 And therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness. 23 Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him;24 But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead;

The story of Abraham is more about what God did for Abraham than what Abraham did for God. His life is an example for us, that is why Abraham's life is recorded. The lesson learned from  his life will always be that God is  our hero.

*note God changed Abrams name to Abraham by adding the 5th letter of the Hebrew alphabet to be the 5th letter of his name. Sarai's name was changed to Sarah in the same way.  The number 5 in the Bible represents grace!