Trusting an Unfailing God

Genesis 25-30

Well, I am sorry to say this, but have you noticed that thus far in the book of Genesis the example that most of the women have given us is precisely what NOT to do? While Rachel was pregnant with Jacob and Esau God told her what there future would be like. "Two nations are warring within you and the younger will rule the older." In that revelation God didn't say a single thing like, "Now, Rachel, I'm gonna need your help on this one..." Did He? No, of course not.

But, like Sarah before her, and so many of us after her, she took matters into her own hands. In order to help God bring His will to pass Rachel betrayed one of her own sons and deceived her husband. I cannot even begin to imagine the long lasting impact her deception would have on her marriage, and would Esau ever speak to her again? Finally, she loses the one thing she most cared about. She has to send Jacob away to protect his life from the brother she helped, and even persuaded him to betray. She loses everything in her life that mattered in a single act of mistrust.

Reading about how prone to intervention these first women of the Bible were, Eve, Sarah, Rachel (even remember Lot's wife and daughters) it should scream out to us as a warning. GOD KNOWS WHAT HE IS DOING! If He has made you a promise, HE WILL BRING IT TO PASS. If He has told you something, HE WILL SEE IT THROUGH.

As we wait and wonder when He will act, let us remember the examples He intentionally left for us. Let us learn from their mistakes and let us not repeat them. Let us learn to trust God, His wisdom and His perfect timing. He always knows what He is doing and nothing ever takes Him by surprise.

This lesson was brought home very personally for me as Owen and I struggled with our few years of infertilty. There was no known reason why we couldn't conceive. This was sometimes an encouragement, it is always better that nothing be wrong, right? Other times it was a great frustration, for if nothing was wrong there was nothing for me to fix, and I find myself to be a great fixer...at least in my mind.

Owen and I had determined long before this struggle that we did not personally beieve in intervening to force conception. This conviction is not for everyone and I could never pass judgment on another couple as they face this incredible difficult choice. I only know what was right for us. For our situation we both believed that our only coioce was to trust God. In His time we believed that we would conceive.

A little over two years into our struggle God allowed me to discover my intolerance to gten. That discovery brought with it not only pregnancy, but the greatest quality of life change I could have imagined. It was not merely God's will for us to have a beautiful baby boy. It was also His will for me to be in perfect health, thriving as I carried and now raise that precious child. Had we intervened and tried to force our will we might have succeeded in creating a life, for God often allows our will to prevail, even when it is contrary to His, as evidenced by the reading which inspires this entry. But, although we might have succeeded in attaining the child we desired, I would continue to be ill, and who is to say that I would have been able to sustain the pregnancy? And though any child is precious, a child created at any other time would not have been this child. He or she would not have been my beautiful Noble boy. And what joy would I now be missing in my life if this sweet boy were not a part of it?

You see, there is so much more to our faith in God's purposes than merely our own life and choices. Whose life might be depending on my faith in God's promises? Whose life might be impacted by my forcing of my own will for my own purposes?

It is not merely for myself that I must trust my God. He is Master, Creator, Lord of all creation. He holds the future in His hands - not merely my future, but all future. I must trust Him. I must believe Him. He has never failed me.