Don't Believe Everything you Read

Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to dwell there, for the famine was severe in the land.   Abraham his 60-year-old wife and travelled south to Egypt. The Faroe noticed her and took her into his house. Jewish legends say that in comparison to Sarai, all other women looked like monkeys. She was even more beautiful than Eve.  As people get older they are attracted to people of similar age, so maybe pharaoh was quite old.  Either way, Sarah was beautiful. However God had said go into the land I will show you he never said to leave even if there was a famine so when Abraham left the land of promise, he was in effect saying that he believed God could not keep  him in the land promise. The walk of faith is all about us learning to give the word of God authority in our lives; more authority than what we see or feel. His disobedience threatened his posterity; the nation that would come from him.  Sarah’s womb from whom the Messiah descendant would come could have been defiled by a gentile king. It was difficult to live in the land of God’s promise but we can be in the will of God and have troubles and testing. Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.   And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. Jas 1:2-4  The devils temptation is to not trust God to meet your need and to go back to Egypt and there will be consequences.  Abraham picked up Hagar in Egypt, God forgave him but there were still consequences. Abram was not wrong for being concerned about famine and feeding his family, but Abram was wrong in thinking God would not provide for his needs in the place where God called him to live. After all, God called Abram to Canaan, not to Egypt.  Abram, like most of us, found it hard to not let what he saw and heard on the TV and in the paper  affect his faith in God’s word. Yet, God sovereignty acted to save him. He did not even awaken Abram to repentance before he did so. He just moved in and said, "I will put the story right again." It ought to be encouraging to us to see that even this big failure was not too great for God to overcome. The Lord sent Abram back to the land he should never have left and continued the story.

Friends, God is committed to helping us live in his promises. Thank God is not three strike and you’re out.  He is our father he’s trying to help us learn to live by faith.  He knows it’s to our advantage for us to learn to live by faith and He is not put off by our weakness or failure.