Waiting for the Promise of God

Then He brought him outside and said, “Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.”  -Genesis 15:5 (NKJV) 

For the first time in a number of days, Ada and I were able to take our evening walk last night under a clear sky.  The night was cold, but the stars were shining so brightly that it was as if you could reach out and touch them.  The nearest star to earth, other than the sun, is Proxima Centauri which is a little more than 4 light years away.  That’s a distance almost too great to get my mind around, but then I consider that countless stars in the solar system are millions of light years away.  Such distances stagger the imagination and stretch the mind’s limits of our comprehension of space.  The Bible says that Abraham of the Old Testament was becoming impatient waiting for the heir which the Lord had promised.  God told him to go outside and look up into the sky and try to count the stars, an impossible task.  That was how numerous his descendants would be. 

It’s humbling to think that the great patriarch Abraham saw the same stars that we see when he looked up into the night sky.  God used a powerful comparison to get the point across that the promised blessings would exceed Abraham’s greatest expectations.  God always does that; when He blesses us He does so in ways that take us beyond what we might have expected.  God then demonstrates that when we trust in Him that He will bring blessings into our lives that far exceed anything we might have imagined.  Why then are we so unwilling to take God at His word?  Why are we so quick to doubt that God can and will do what He has promised?  Abraham the man of faith struggled with these very issues.  Even though he struggled with doubts, through faith He experienced the fullness of God’s blessings and the promise became as reality. 

Do you feel that you are still waiting for the Lord to bring the promised blessings which come from being faithful to Him?  Do not doubt, do not give up, and never stop believing that God can and will bring about the blessings and victory He has promised.  The waiting gets tiring, I know.  But God is faithful and He always blesses us when we wait on Him. 

Stand firm, trust the Lord, and keep going forward in faith.  The promises of God will become a reality.