Let me tell you, Christian friend, how you know when God has chosen to enlarge your soul and grow your faith: He places impossibility in your life and allows you to tremble. This doesn’t likely jive with the shallow, silly idea that someone placed in your head which painted God as the chuckling Grandpa who only provides sweet treats for His little ones. No, God is committed to your learning His greatness, power, faithfulness and resourcefulness. He sometimes structures your circumstances to result in you being completely out of options as you fear that you are just about out of time. Just ask Sarah, that elderly woman in Genesis whom God had promised a yet-to-arrive baby boy.
“So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “After I am worn out, and my lord is old, shall I have pleasure?” The Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too hard for the Lord?” – Genesis 18:12-14 {ESV}
No finger pointing at Sarah today because she is me and she is you. We’ve all doubted. We’ve all feared. We’ve all complained. We have ALL assumed defeat in a situation where God intended victory. Sarah expressed her lapse of faith with disbelieving laughter at the promise of God. One can hardly blame an 89 year old woman whose husband was 99 for scoffing at the notion that she would need to have a nursery set up in the home within a year. Really old people don’t make babies. Biology 101 asks us to be reasonable as we approach this promise of God. Human sexual reproduction isn’t possible for geriatrics no matter how we look at it. But God told Abraham and Sarah to put on the Barry White CD, turn down the lights and start shopping for cribs because a baby would be on the way.
Sarah laughed at God because nothing in her life gave a shred of evidence that the promise could occur. Nothing supported her hope. There was only the raw, naked promise from years before that a son would be given her. Quite frankly, she had given up on this in her heart some time before. When the promise was refreshed in Genesis 18, this sweet daughter of God suppressed the old hope and instead offered a skeptical chuckle.
God asked Abraham, her husband, “Why did Sarah laugh and voice doubt on My care and provision?”
Then God asked the question that we need to occasionally wrestle with: Is anything too hard for the Lord? Your orthodox theology ejects the answer, “No! Nothing is too hard for God because He is God!” But your trembling heart whispers, “I don’t doubt His ability but I’m having a hard time trusting that He will come through for me in my current crisis.” Well, reach out your hand and shake the hand of Sarah because you have much in common with her. So do I at times. Let me sum up how this process is working in your life:
God wants you trust Him more deeply than ever before. To accomplish this He sets up circumstance that challenges that trust more than ever before. You sense your powerlessness more than ever before. It scares you more than ever before. It feels like there is more at stake than ever before. He’s waiting longer to act more than ever before. He’s quieter than He’s ever been before. He’s not moving. He’s not rescuing. This hurts more than ever before. You are struggling more than ever before…
Then He comes through like never before. He strengthens your faith like never before. He shows you faithfulness like never before. You learn to trust God like never before. Amazingly, when He comes through you look upon the test and thank Him for it when you once begged Him to get rid of it. This is how God works. This is what He did for Sarah and this is what He does for you.
I love the fact that God didn’t retract His care and commitment because Sarah was struggling to trust Him. I rejoice that He doesn’t do that to me when I’m not exactly the shining example of unwavering hopefulness. Sometime after Sarah’s nervous laughter at the promise of God… the cry of a newborn son broke the silence of the day. Sarah held a baby boy that came forth from her own womb and called his name for the very first time. What was that name? Isaac. The name means Laughter. Every time she called his name she remembered that, where she once laughed in unbelieving doubt, God made her to joyfully laugh in the fulfilled promise received. Nothing is too hard for the Lord.
And that includes the very thing that He’s placed in your lap. Trust Him for today.