This is the first of several posts about how we respond to a word or a promise from God.
Each time looking at different people in the Bible and how they responded to a word they received and whether their response was good or not.
When we receive a promise or a word from God what should our response be?
Are we supposed to wait for God to bring it to pass?
Or are we supposed to get involved to make it happen?
Well, as ever, with God there is no method or formula.
It is a case of knowing what God is saying for each situation.
But let us see how things worked differently for each situation in the Bible.
Abraham had the promise from God that he would have a son
even though his wife was beyond the age of child-bearing.
This was something only God could do but through lack of patience
and pressure from his wife
Abraham tried to make it happen through self-effort
And so he bore a son through the handmaiden - Hagar
But this was not God's promise being fulfilled and Abraham waited many more years
before he received Isaac, the son of promise through his wife, Sarah.
Abraham was supposed to wait for God to fulfill His word.
In Psalm 37 we read - Be still in the presence of the Lord
and wait patiently for Him to act
And that should have been Abraham's response.
When we hear a word we don't always know how it fits into the bigger picture
of God's eternal purposes.
How it fits into God's timing relative to other situations.
How one thing has to happen before it's the right time for something else.
Just because we have been given a glimpse of something of the future
doesn't mean it's imminent even though we are a people of "now"
Don't be impatient because we don't know God's timing.
Don't be coerced by others to move ahead of God.
We will look at further situations needing different responses later
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