by Dennis Su

Recently we learned about Abraham and Sarah doubting God. In the lesson, the kids were taught that Abraham and Sarah didn’t trust God with being able to fulfill his promise of giving Abraham an heir, a child. This was illustrated by having the kids wait quietly for an extended period of time before we would continue the lesson. During this awkward waiting time, the intent was to raise doubts that the quiet waiting period was going to come to an end. As a result of Abraham and Sarah’s waiting, Sarah came up with a plan to take things into their own hands by having Abraham have a child with Hagar, her servant. It is Sarah’s behavior that reminds me about how we sometimes put ourselves in the role of God to accomplish things that we feel are right or are entitled to.

Sarah was getting old and the reasons for her physically not being able to have children were stacking up. It was through her own judgment that a more fitting plan than God’s was created to fulfill both her desire and in her own strange way God’s promise. Although Sarah was ultimately not known for consistently being lacking in her faith, this one incident serves as a reminder for Christians that we are under the umbrella of God who promises us an inheritance through Christ and that our trust should be in Him and nothing else.

Through Christ we have been put in good standing with God, being given the promise of so much (Ephesians 1:3-14). We are still sinners and are subject to a world that is full of temptations and like Sarah, we will find ourselves in circumstances where our way may seem better than God’s. But if we are set on knowing that God’s promises are perfect without error and trustworthy, we can rest in knowing that His plans will be carried out in His own timing and not our own. As the kids were waiting, some began to question whether the time of silence would end. In the case of Abraham and Sarah, who carried out their own plan apart from God, it was God’s perfect plan that resulted in His fulfilled promise through the birth of Isaac born from Sarah at the age of 90.