Fear No Fear

(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)

So Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord, whose children you now are if you do well and are not put in fear of any terror.
1 Peter 3:6 (emphasis added)

I never really liked Sarah. She didn’t seem to believe God about anything. She laughed at God. She had a bad idea about promise engulfment — and got second thoughts about it. And she got a child anyway. Was she a whiner? Conniving? Nagger? I didn’t know, but she was my least favourite wife. And I wasn’t doing her any justice at all. I was really, really, really not seeing it. The writer of Hebrews put her into the hall of faith (Hebrews 11:11-12). So what was I missing?

First off, she laughed at the IDEA that she would have a child and not AT God. She had faith in God. But this was a little much. She knew her body. She’d been in it a long time. She knew how it worked. She knew what it could do. And she knew what it couldn’t do. She couldn’t shake the reality of her physical self from the equation. That made it laughable. How could she conceive a child? She’d literally been around women who had borne children all her life. She must have known other barren women. She was no longer a young maiden. She’d been through menopause at this point. She intimately knew everything to do with herself and with the biological cycle. She knew what the deal was. Ask any woman and they will tell you that they know what their bodies can and can’t do. How could she conceive a child in a body this old?

But she had to have had faith in it at some point. Why? Free will. Abraham could have had all the faith in the world, and she wouldn’t have conceived. His faith couldn’t make her receive something from God. Your faith can’t save anyone else. Your faith won’t heal anyone else. Your faith won’t keep someone from making a mistake. Their faith must work. Even a mustard seed’s worth. But they have to have it. Sarah could NEVER have conceived unless she believed. So she must have. Hebrews 11:11-12 says “By faith even Sarah herself received power to conceive, and she bore a child when she was past age, since she counted him faithful who had promised. Therefore as many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as innumerable as the sand which is by the sea shore, were fathered by one man, and him as good as dead.” Sarah trusted. Sarah choose to have faith. And she had her impossible son. It was her believing the Lord’s words to and about her.

It is interesting to me that between laughing at the idea of her having a child and her having a child we only have one incident recorded. That’s their trip down south in Genesis 20. This time period is the only time she had to shift from ‘this is ridiculous’ to ‘this could be’. It was an Abraham situation and not one of faith. Abraham was… He was human and he had his own issues. Fear was one of them. Lying was another. Technical lying at that. Twice when going into other lands, he feared he would be killed so people could take Sarah for themselves. So he instructed her to tell people they were siblings — technically correct since they shared a father, but not mothers — twice. He was kicked out of Egypt because of it. In both cases the rulers of the country saw Sarah, desired Sarah, learned she was a sister without apparent attachment, and took her for their own into their own homes. And Abraham did nothing. There is no record he called out to God to save the situation, but there’s no record he didn’t.

Genesis 20 is the second time it happened in the court of Abimelech. Although Abimelech desired Sarah and had taken her into his house he had not done anything with her yet. When the Lord appears to him in a dream to tell him to return Sarah to her husband he protests that he is innocent of wrongdoing and God agrees. Not only does God agree, but God says that He kept Abimelech from sinning. Now we know the law of dominion. We know that when it comes to humanity and the affairs of humanity God has in His sovereignty limited Himself. We need to choose Him and we need to give Him permission to interact/intervene in a situation (again, the way He wants, when He wants, and how He wants. We don’t get to make God do anything). God clearly intervenes here. God clearly — by His own words — acted. So who gave Him permission? It had to have been Sarah. Abraham was going with the flow and staying under the radar. His words (in verses 11-13) show he was still scared. He wasn’t walking in authority or power here.

Abraham had instructed Sarah to always claim she was his sister — which technically she was since they shared a father but not a mother — in order to keep his life out of danger wherever they went. He believed that because she was beautiful people would kill him to be able to claim her. We have a record that she went along with Abraham’s instructions. She was obedient. Say what you will about her, Sarah wasn’t shy about talking to Abraham. She has some full and volatile conversations with him. She wasn’t a wallflower. So why agree with this? Why let herself be put into danger of having to bed these kings? Hebrews 11:11 tells us. Sarah had faith. When she was taken into Abimelech’s household, she must have cried out to God because God came and actively intervened on her behalf. She gave God permission and God acted. Sarah had faith.

Once Sarah got herself and her limited natural thinking out of the way, Sarah could choose to believe God. Sarah is the same as we are. Once we get ourselves out of the way, we can choose to believe God. The danger of being taken as another man’s mate, the repercussions of a bad decision so your maid is getting uppity, and the reality of being well past childbearing and menopause and having a child. Big issues. Big faith. Sarah must have thought about everything God had said to them over all the years that Abraham had been following God. And Sarah believed. She believed. No reason to believe. Every reason to be terrified about some of it. Instead, she was obedient to God, submissive to her husband, and placed all her trust that God would make everything okay. And He did. She was released from both king’s homes without being bedded — and she got a thousand pieces of silver given from Abimelech to prove that her honour is vindicated. Her maid left the picture and no one took her son’s inheritance. Yes, she had the promised son.

She trusted that God would take care of her. There were bumps along her road of faith, but she got there. She trusted. God faithfully responded. If you will have faith. If you will believe, God will take care of you too (Matthew 6:26). But you have to act on your belief. Submit to God and do what He tells you to (James 4:7). Unusual or normal. What God says goes (Joshua 1:9). The buck stops with Him. He will take full responsibility and He will take care of you (Deuteronomy 28:1-68). He promises in His Word that He will. Philippians 4:19 tells us “My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” Have faith and trust Him. We are the seed of Abraham and because of that, we are part of the Abrahamic covenant. We can walk in the same trust and faith those two people developed. They got to the point where they walked without fear in their trust of the Lord. We can too. We can choose to not be fearful of any of the terrors of life because our trust is in the Lord. Develop your faith. Read the Word and strengthen it. Believe the Word. Receive it. And walk in it.

Daily Affirmation of God’s Love: 1 Peter 2:9-10

It wasn’t enough that God loved you. It wasn’t enough that Jesus volunteered to come and die for you. It wasn’t enough that you are welcomed into His Kingdom as a son or daughter. No. God had to choose you. He needed to choose you in particular. That was all that could be. He chose you as a person, as a priest, and as part of His holy nation. He called you out of darkness into light. From ignorance to knowledge. He showed mercy to one who did not deserve mercy — each of us. We were nothing and no one before. Now? We are His people. His children. His priests. His holy nation. His chosen. His singled-out-since-before-time-was-time individual, whom God not only loved, but whom God picked. You. Chosen by God. That’s how special you are. That’s how cherished you are. That’s how wonderful you are. He chose you. As you are. You. As you can be in Him. You. He loves you. So very, very much.

Your Daily Confession of God’s love to YOU:

Today God loves that I _______.