I've been mulling over a very important principle recently. It was brought home to me by one of those crocodile scriptures. You know the sort of thing I mean – a little verse that appears to be a harmless little log floating in the water, but which can suddenly jump up and bite you … This particular crocodile was lurking in Galatians 4 vv. 22-23: "The holy writings say that Abraham had two sons. One was the son of the slave woman. The other one was the son of the free woman. The child of the slave woman was born as any child is born. But the child of the free woman was born because God promised he would be born." (Worldwide English New Testament – well ... why not work from a fairly obscure translation...?)

It’s worth remembering the context (Genesis 16-21) in which this happened.

FACT: Abraham and Sarah were both very old, and Sarah was past the age of childbearing;
FACT: God made a promise – to both Abraham and Sarah, independently – that Sarah would bear Abraham a child;
FACT: Sarah clearly wanted to believe the promise of God. So did Abraham. But it was too big a thing for them to believe. Their God wasn’t big enough.

Now here’s the rub. The Bible says “Let God be true, and every man a liar” (Romans 3v4). If God gives us something to believe – equipping for a job of work He’s called us to do, a promise to receive by faith, or a challenge to respond to – we can respond two ways:

First, we can do what we all flatter ourselves we’d do. We can respond saying “well, Lord, I’ve no idea how You’re gonna do this. But I know you will! Praise You!”
Second, we can do what Abraham and Sarah did. We can allow our (lack of) understanding of God’s sovereignty and supernatural power to dictate our belief in the ways in which He can work. We can argue with God. We can protest that His word won’t come true. And finally, even when we decide to accept that His word is true, we can decide that it isn’t the actual word as spoken that’s true, but our somewhat paler interpretation of it, which we need to give a sneaky helping hand to “bring in by the back door”. To illustrate, I mean we can say to God something like this: ”God, you’ve promised me something big. But this time, you got it wrong. The fact is, you can’t do that thing in my life – you’re too small a God. But God, because I’m nice, I’m going to give you a helping hand. I’m going to make sure that this happens. I’m going to do everything I can do to make sure that you aren’t embarrassed.”

How did Abraham and Sarah jump through these hoops? Well, first they both denied that God’s promise was possible; and then they made up their minds that that God had meant a certain thing. In their case, He hadn’t meant “I will give you a son” in any literal sense …. it was figurative. Sarah was too old. So Sarah began to “half-believe” God. Rather than her bearing a child to her own husband, she would be a quasi-mother to the slave woman’s child.

Now let’s not be too hasty to judge Abraham and Sarah. We have to understand Sarah’s misgivings about giving birth as a ninety-year old! But let’s not be hasty to judge God, either. The fact is, He said He would do something. And He did it. Thankfully, God’s doesn’t rely on us fulfilling our side of the bargain before He fulfils His!

Result: God makes promises to us that are easy enough for Him to do, but which (to us) seem impossible. We can lose faith in God’s commitment to the promise when time passes and hope fades; or when the promise is too big for our limited Christianity to understand. So, we rationalise the promises of God. We make up action plans (“how we would do things, if we were God”!!) and pursue those. We chase the gift, rather than the Giver. We focus on the hope rather than the fulfilment.

Conclusion: When God speaks, we need to listen to Him. That said, we also need to trust Him. It can be hard sometimes – even a God as unfailing, as massive, as constant, as gentle and as kind as ours! But He has shown, time and time again, that He is trustworthy. We can afford to trust Him, not just to do the “easy” stuff - the everyday, the commonplace, the normal; we can also trust Him to do the unthinkable, the amazing, and – yes – even the impossible. What a great God!