The God Who Remembers Part 2

The God Who Remembers

Part 2
God calls us into a journey that involves dreams and promises.  Jeremiah 29:11 says, “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” But, what we learn from Scripture is that we are incapable of making those dreams and promises happen.  Today, we will study the journey of a barren woman who became the mother of a child of promise.

 

God said to Abraham, “I will make you into a great nation…” (Genesis 12:2) There was only one problem.  “Now Sarai was barren; she had no children.”  (Genesis 11:30)  Barrenness denies a future and yet we will discover that the God who promises remembers us and he remembers the promises he has given.   We will learn that only God can birth the dreams and promises that he has given to us. In a sense, each one of us is “barren” for we lack the ability to birth what the Holy Spirit has conceived in our hearts.  The lesson of barrenness is that, unless God touches us to give birth to the promise, then the promise is “as good as dead”.
3 Requirements to seeing Dreams & Promises Fulfilled

Genesis 21:1-7

 

1. You must wait for God’s timing.

• “Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him.” Genesis 21:2

They waited for 25 years for God to remember his promise.  We learn that delay doesn’t mean denial.

 

• The example from the story of Joseph: he waited 13 years for his destiny or dream to come forth. Genesis 37

 

• Galatians 4:4 “In the fullness of time God sent his Son.”

 

• Romans 5:6 “You see at just the right time, when we were powerless, Christ died for us.”

 

2. You must not help God.

• Sarah tried to help God: “The Lord has kept me from having children.  Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her.”  Genesis 16:2

 

• Abraham was finally in the right place for the promise. But because of impatience, he sought to make the promise happen prematurely. (See Genesis 12:5 & 16:3)

 

• Abraham and Sarah’s solution has become everyone’s sorrow (tension in the Middle East).  We learn that our journey is full of opportunities to “help God out” when it will only complicate the matter.

 

• Proverbs 3:5 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding…”

 

3. You must persevere.

• Hebrews6:15 “And so after waiting patiently [persevering], Abraham received what was promised.”

 

• Romans 4:20-21 “Yet Abraham did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.”