The promise to Abraham has been fulfilled and yet is being fulfilled as new members of the Seed of Abraham (the Christians) are added each day. If we are willing to believe God until His Word comes to pass, we may receive a fulfillment on a level with that of faithful Abraham.

The barren will finally produce extraordinary fruit when the barrenness is coming from the Lord and the individual holds steady in faith and patience.

Many great works of the Bible were performed through people who had to wait for God while other individuals went about their business without problems. Abraham, Joseph, Hannah the mother of Samuel, and Zacharias and Elisabeth, the parents of John the Baptist, come to mind.

Abraham had to wait a quarter of a century before he was able to have a child. But so great was the rejuvenation of his body that after Sarah's death he remarried and had many children without incident.

If your ordinary desires and expectations are deferred for an unusual period of time it may be true that when your hope is fulfilled it will be extraordinary—as was true in the case of Abraham, and also Manoah and his wife, the parents of Samson. The promises of God are worth waiting for!

We believers in Christ are to be people of vision. We must fasten our eyes on the promises of the Lord and confess we are not at home in the present world. This is the way of faith.

If we will fix our hope on the city of God, as did Abraham and Sarah, God will be pleased with us and we will inherit the Glory of God.

Faith and Obedience

By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, (Hebrews 11:17)

The offering of Isaac in obedience to God remains as one of the pillars of the Judaic-Christian revelation. Satan entered the world because of the disobedience of Adam and Eve. The promised Seed in whom the nations of the earth will be blessed was announced after Abraham had obeyed God in an act of faith surpassed only by the Lord Jesus Christ in Gethsemane.

God promised Abraham a seed. The seed finally was born. After Abraham had grown to love his boy, God asked that he be returned to Himself.

Here is one of the supreme aspects of the kind of faith that receives the answer of God. Every one of us must always be willing to return to God anything and everything God asks for.

Any relationship, thing, or circumstance we are unwilling to surrender to God is an idol. No victorious servant of God is permitted to have an idol. We must love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. We must have no other God that we worship.

In many instances God is unable to give us the desire of our heart because God knows if we received what we are asking for it would become an idol.

The Lord Jesus stated that all that belongs to Him belongs to the Father, and all that belongs to the Father belongs to Jesus.

To be continued.