06.18.23

Scripture Reading - Gen. 18.1-15; 21.1-7

Message

I want to begin this morning by asking you a question. When was the last time you saw God do something so unbelievable you knew it was God? Our text this morning, following the story of Abram and Sarai or Abraham and Sarah has to be one of those times.

God had made the promise to Abram that He would bless him, and along the journey Abraham demonstrated he was a man of faith. Even though the promise wasn’t immediately fulfilled. Now, realize Abraham was 75 years old when he left Harran to go to Canaan.

And he lived with that promise for another 25 years. Isaac, the son of Abraham and Sarah was born when Abraham was 100 years old and Sarah was 90. Now I can’t imagine anyone looked at Abraham and Sarah and said, “oh you kids. It’s about time you started a family.” Not even Sarah thought that because when she hears the promise that she, herself will have a child, she laughs and says, “Now, that I am so old? Will I have this experience? Will I become pregnant?” To Sarah, the idea of giving birth to her was ridiculous and impossible.

But God specializes in things thought impossible. And so when a 90-year-old woman gives birth to her first son, all she can say is, “This is from God. God did this.”

When’s the last time you had an experience where all you could say is, “This is from God. God did this.”? My guess is for many of us it’s been a while. And there are two reasons I can give for this.

First, the acts of God cannot be manipulated or controlled. I’m sure Abraham didn’t want to wait 25 years for a child to be born, and for the blessing to begin to be fulfilled. If it was up to him, he might have tried to get God to give him a child every year. In fact, it was this desire to help God that Sarah offered Hagar to Abraham. Ishmael was born in an attempt to move the promise along. So it might be that we haven’t seen a mighty move of God because we have gotten in the way.

A second reason we might not have seen a mighty move from God in a while is because we haven’t asked Him for one. Be honest. When was the last time you asked God to do something that only He could do? When’s the last time you were so desperate for God to move that you refused to stop praying until it happened? But Pastor I’m busy. I’ve got a lot going on in my life. My to-do list is a mile long and if I don’t get everything finished, the world will fall apart.

Which leads me to the third reason we don’t see a mighty move from God. We don’t really want to, or maybe we don’t really believe He will do anything mighty for us. Now, I’m not saying this to be completely negative, but maybe we think that God is off taking care of other things and that we don’t want to bother Him by asking Him to do something for us. We are taught for so long that we can’t bother people with every little thing, or that really important people are too busy to bother with our unimportant lives, and we look at God through those same glasses. God is in charge of the universe, He has more important things to do than to help me.

But scripture tells us over and over again how much God loves us and how much He wants to help us. How much He can do because He is all-powerful. How He can do it correctly because He is all-knowing. So do you want Him to do something mighty for you? Do you want to press in and ask Him to do for you what you can’t do for yourself? Do you want to call upon God and ask Him for a mighty move? He really can do “Great Things”.