LIVING BY UNSEEN REALITIES

 I WILL MAKE YOU INTO A GREAT NATION                                 GENESIS 12:2

Genesis 12:1-9; 13:14-18

"How odd/Of God. /To choose/The Jews.".  The whole question of why God chooses whom he chooses to do his work, in the world is a mystery. Those lines of William Norman Ewer were his way of wondering why. The Bible’s answer regarding God’s choosing people is, "so that no one may boast before him" 1 Corinthians 1:29). This means that the real story here is about God, not about whom he chooses as his servant. The personal and moral qualities one might look for in a man who was to be the father of millions, and through whom the peoples of earth would be blessed, aren’t mentioned in Genesis 12 because they are beside the point.  All God looked for in Abram was faith. Would Abram trust God enough to leave what he had known, to travel to something he didn’t know? 

Note: It was not something God had shown him; it was what God would show him. Abram didn’t even get a map; all he got a promise. His faith was to call to live by unseen realities.

What a worldview of prayer!  When we do something on our own with what we can see, who gets the glory?  We do. When God answers prayer in ways we can’t see, who get the glory? He does.  So, now no one can boast.

Wherever Abram went, this man of faith pitched tents and built altars (see 12:7; 13:18). Tents are about the seen, what is ours; altars are about the unseen, what is God’s. Abram’s place of residence was a passing thing, his hope in the God he prayed to was fixed. If God’s people are often odd (see 1 Corinthians 1:25-29), it’s only because God’s methods are odd too – from the world’s perspective. So again, no one can boast.

To pray you must hope in God’s good promises more than you do in your own good ideas. When you do this, you are taken places you never dreamed, for you hear God calling you to:

Leap out from your reedy shallows.

Dive into the moving water.

Eyeless, learn to see truly.

Find in my folly your true sanity.

Written by:  William Norman Ewer

 In Christ,

Playwright Janet Irene Thomas

Founder/CEO

Bible Stories Theatre of

Fine & Performing Arts

www.biblestoriestheatre.org

info@biblestoriestheatre.org