God Only Recognises What He Gives You
God is a loving Father who gives His children every good gift. James 1:17 reads,
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above,
and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom
is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
He knows our needs before we can ever anticipate them. Whenever we ask Him of our needs in the name of Jesus Christ, He willingly gives us those things in His own time (Ecclesiastes 3:11). Sometimes we expect God to provide the answers to our prayers in our own way and preferred time, but Isaiah 58:8 says
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.
More often than not, instead of waiting patiently on God to fulfill His promises concerning our lives, we take our own initiatives and do things our own way and then expect God to endorse the things we acquire with our own wisdom and physical strength. However, God only recognizes the things He gives us! Some of the things we acquire ourselves may be good and seem to have eternal value, but if they weren’t given by God, He doesn’t acknowledge them.
After the fall in the garden, God started looking for an alternative way to reconcile and to bring redemption back to man. Even when man had rejected God, God was still looking for man. He isolated Abraham from his idolatrous background and gave him a promise that He would make him a father of many nations. With this promise, God had redemption of man in mind.
Abraham started contemplating on how the promise of God was going to be fulfilled since he was very old, and yet didn’t have any children. Moreover, Sarah his wife was also at the stage of ‘double menopause’. Faced with these discouraging facts, Sarah suggested to Abraham that he have affairs with her maid Hagar. It was rather unusual because women are almost always jealous and overprotective over their husbands, and for Sarah who apparently was living like a queen to give her own loving husband to none other than a mere maidservant, shows the level of their desperation.
Abraham who usually would consult God on every decision didn’t consult God this time. He had an affair with Hagar and gave birth to Ismael. Thirteen years later, Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him [1].
Abraham continued his faith walk with God talking to Him every now and then and one day, God told Abraham to offer Isaac as a sacrifice to Him. After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.” [2]
Notice, that as at this time, Abraham had two sons, Isaac and Ismael; Ismael was older than Isaac by 13 years. Nevertheless, when God was asking him to offer Isaac as a sacrifice, He said “take your son, your only son Isaac”. The LORD used “your only son Isaac” to emphasise on the fact that He didn’t recognise Ismael, because Ismael was birth out of the wisdom of Sarah and the strength of Abraham.
It is therefore imperative to wait on the Lord to establish His will and promises concerning your life. If you start something with your own strength and wisdom, you will have to complete it with your mortal strength and finite wisdom. But if God starts with you, to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine [3]. He shall surely bring it to a perfect end. DON’T do it your own way, or at your own preferred time. WAIT on the Lord. He is never too fast, yet never too late. He will definitely show up.
References
[1] Genesis 21:2
[2] Genesis 22:1-2
[3] Ephesians 3:20
Post a comment: