Ready for the unknown? Your father decides to move, takes you, your nephew and all and sets out to Canaan which is maybe 600 miles west. But, fathers being fathers, yours starts off northwest and takes you 700 miles that-away. When he gets to Haran, he settles there and years later dies there. You are left in this new location as the head of the family—you have settled in.
Then God shows up. God says for you to get back on the original journey to Canaan which is now maybe 400 miles southwest. But God is not just sending you on a journey for He promises you, Abram, four wondrous things:
1. God will show you where
2. God will make you a great nation
3. God will bless you
4. God will make your name great
All of this God will do ‘so that you will be a blessing’ to all the families of the earth!
Have you ever thought God was giving you a promise but the fulfillment wasn’t within your expectations, timing, means, complications, involvement, understanding? Abram is 75 when God gives him the promises and he begins the journey but over the next decades you will settle in Canaan, move to Egypt, come back to Canaan, fight a war to free your nephew, be visited by angels, meet the king-priest of God Most High and yet have no offspring. At 86, your wife’s servant maid will give birth to your son Ishmael but at 99 God will change your name and your wife’s name to match the fulfillment of the 24-years-earlier promise. You are 100 when you and your wife have son Isaac, the son of promise.
God is true to His promises. God is not slow but you may need to have patience to see the fulfillment. Do you have that continuing faith?