McLeansville Baptist Church Pastor Mike Barnette

This is about timing not time. Do not mistake God's intentionality for slowness. God is not slow. He made light speed!



The question is, at what speed are we living life? The speed of sound, the speed of the Smartphone, or the speed of God?



There is a great lesson we can take from this study, that you, me, nor anyone is going to hurry God! When it comes to God’s plan for the world, for your life, or for your child's life, you can disobey God, you can get ahead of God, you can fall behind God, but you will not hurry God!



We are learning about waiting, trusting, conforming, and being renewed; because, after all, God is going to do what he promised, and even through the bumbling and fumbling of Abraham, the grace of God will prove sufficient.

Every phase of life offers us new challenges and difficulties. That's the reality of living in a broken, fallen world. So what are we to do? How do we not only survive, but thrive in the difficult life we have not only been given, but called to?

Ten years is a long time to wait, particularly when you have trusted God, uprooted your family, and journeyed by faith into a place you had no knowledge of and no connection to, other than the promise from God that he would make you the father of a great nation by giving you a son.

Ten years is long enough to take anyone to the precipice of either Getting Ahead of God or of Abandoning their Faith altogether! Yet, waiting has a way of weeding out the faithlessness.
When we wait on God this is not killing time, it is, as we are learning from Abram and Sarai, a season of refining, and of bringing the dross of faithlessness, idolatry, and of fear and doubt to the surface so God can remove it.

What you have before you, in this Action/Adventure chapter, is a man who is growing in grace, a man who is being changed by his walk with God. It has been months, perhaps years, since that flight in fear down to Egypt. Over that time Abram has been learning to trust God. In this chapter there are five marks of that growth evident in how Abram responds to the crisis.

We have all heard it said, "He/she has backslided." What does that mean? In short, there was once a time and place in life where that person was walking closer to God than they are now. There are people, perhaps listening right now, who are living like Abram in Egypt. You have compromised your faith, fearful that life was not going to work out, or that you would lose what you had, and in desperation you have turned to the world for support, supply, or comfort. 



Maybe you have made hasty decisions, gotten ahead of God, and now you do not know how to recover.  Maybe there is sin dominating your life right now. Maybe you are living with anxiety and fear so you are “coping” by surrendering your soul to a life that looks like what God saved you out of.



And it is costing you.  It is costing you a life of living in the fullness of joy, the restfulness of peace, and the grandeur of God’s exceeding riches of grace! There is a way back from the backsliding. God’s grace is just as sufficient to receive you, cleanse, renew you, and set you back up in His perfect will, as it was the day you first trusted in the Lord!

What makes a hero? Heroes are not the ones who soar in at times of trouble and rescue us from all our troubles. Heroes are not the people who look, act, and think perfectly. They are not flawless; they are not always right. That would not be a hero, that would be an imagined idol. 



Heroes are people who fall but do not stay down. Heroes are people who make mistakes but learn from them. Heroes are real people, with real weaknesses, who, by way of trial and error, recovery and resolve, become stronger and wiser, and in turn, they help others to find the way through the troubles and trials of life. This is what makes Abraham a true hero of the faith!