Abraham, Prayer, and Trust

Well, my schedule has finally opened up so that I can start attending my church's prayer meetings on Wednesday nights. This has been a blessing to me recently, for a number of reasons. Tonight though, the pastor's message was really kind of interesting to me, and caused some seriously interesting thoughts for me.

We were talking about Genesis, Chapter 20, and one of the less flattering episodes in Abraham's life. Basically, out of fear for his life, upon entering a city, he claimed that Sarah (his wife) was in fact his sister (which was also true, in that she was his half-sister). The king of the city, Abimelech, took Sarah to be a part of his harem. God called Abimelech on it, he repented and brought Sarah back to Abraham. In the course of the event, Abimelech called Abraham on his deception. Abraham prays for Abimelech's house, and the curse of God is lifted from Abimelech.

This had several interesting facets to me.

First, Abraham was clearly a man who trusted in God in a grand scheme. He was 90 years old, and yet got up and left when God told him to go. He had seen the hand of God in his life many times. And yet, when he was faced with a more pedestrian and day to day trouble in his life, he couldn't quite trust God with it. I thought this reflected some of the things we face. How completely we who know God trusted in Him for our salvation, but how difficult is it for us to trust Him with our day to day lives? We find it hard to trust Him with a situation arises, trusting on our own capabilities to make things work out properly. And yet, almost without fail, we manage to turn things into a hash, or a less than optimal situation. We should know that if we trust in Him to take care of things, it will be taken care of. It may not be in the way we desire, but it will be taken care of in a way that will ultimately be to our benefit.

Second, is the emphasis that the Lord seems to be placing on intercessory prayer. In the chapter, Abimelech faced a curse because he took the wife of Abraham, even though he acted in what he thought was good faith. Even though it was God's will that the curse would be lifted, it would take the action of Abraham through prayer for God to be moved to lift the curse. It is in God's power to do whatever it is necessary for His children, but our bending His ear can't hurt anything.

Third, is the fact that Abimelech knew God. When God spoke to him in the dream, Abimelech recognized Him for who He was. Abimelech replied in the dream "Lord, wilt thou slay a righteous nation?" We tend to think that in the Book of Genesis that Abraham was the only one who knew the True God, Yahweh. But we continually see examples of others who knew God. Abimelech is an example, another would be Melchizidek (although there is some argument that Melchizidek is a Christophany, a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ). In modern times, how often do Christians assume that other do not know Christ? Many fundamentalists automatically assume that this is the case. But should we do that? This situation arose because Abraham thought "Surely, the Fear of God is not in this place." What situations could we be setting ourselves up for by assuming the same thing in modern times? Yes, it is a Christians role to spread the Gospel, but we may also be missing a wonderful chance for fellowship and sharing with fellow Christians by assuming that they are lost.

Overall, a set of interesting thoughts.....thought I would share it here.