Now what, but who

This is a time of year when many people make New Year resolutions or set goals for the year. I personally don’t make resolutions, and this is a foolproof way of guaranteeing not breaking resolutions! However, the purpose of this post is not to say you shouldn’t make resolutions or set goals! Instead it is to look at the person of Abraham, and to seek to learn something.

In Gen 12:1 God tells Abraham to leave his country and to go to the “land that I will show you”. Do you notice something? Abraham was called to leave without being told where he was going! As it says in Heb 11:8, he left without knowing where he was going. A similar thing happened when Jesus called His disciples. He said “follow me”. He told them something of what He would do, namely make them fishers of men, but He did not tell them where He would take them. You see the emphasis is not on where they were going, but who they were following.

Now look at Abraham’s life. He is one of my favourite characters in the Bible because he is a mixture of great faith and of struggling with doubt. I can identify with him. He showed great faith when he left Haran. When the land was big enough for both him and Lot he gave Lot the first choice. He was confident in God and so did not need to hold on to things. After he had done this The Lord said he would give him all the land, north, south, east and west (Gen 13:14). and of course when he was willing to sacrifice Isaac.

But he also had great difficulties as well. In particular he had enormous problems believing that God would give him a son. The Hagar and Ishmael incident is the most infamous example of this, but this was not the only time, see Gen 17:17. So why the difference? When he showed faith Abraham’s focus was on the One who was making the promises. When he doubted his focus was on the thing promised.

We may have goals for this year. There may be things that we have longed for for many years, or believe that God has promised to us. If we put our focus on the goal, or the thing promised we will likely head for trouble. If instead we focus on the One who makes the promises we will find much greater joy, and will see many more goals realised.

In Gen 15:1 God says “I am your shield”. Our delight, our joy, our confidence, our faith must always be in the Lord Himself.