"I won't break a promise" -God

I've been thinking about what I taught my little girls on Wednesday night a lot. It was on God promising Abraham and Sarah a child, not only that, but that he will be the father to millions of people and many nations and kings. As the story goes for those who need refreshing, God makes this promise to Abraham and many years go by. In fact He and Sarah realize that Sarah is barren and that having a child looks impossible. So, at eighty years old Abraham fathers a child with Sarah's servant. This child is what will later lead to all the Middle Eastern countries (crazy). Anyway, twenty years later, when Abraham is breaching a hundred years old, God comes to him and lets him know that the covenant they made still stands true and that he and Sarah will have their own child within a year. They do and this child's lineage is exactly as God promised.

For me, this is a story that I've heard over and over since I was a kid, never once has it moved me or made me come to any real revelation, that is, until I had to teach it. I actually got choked up talking to them, explaining that I have felt the way Abraham probably felt all those years ago. I have and still am in a situation where I sit sometimes and say, "God, I don't know how you're going to work this one out. It looks impossible, not to mention I tried to fix it myself and now I've messed it up too bad. I've ruined it." It looked like since Sarah was barren and that they were old that having a natural child was impossible. It looked like God hadn't kept His promise, after all, why had He let them get so old? It didn't make sense. So, they took it into their own hands giving Abraham the servant to have a child with. Now they have this child, but not from Sarah. It looks like they have messed everything up. In a human mind, our thought process is, "I've messed up, I don't deserve to have God come through. I don't deserve to have Him keep His promise, not now. I should have trusted Him, how will I ever be worthy again of that promise?"

God's a nice guy though. He shows up twenty years after Abraham had taken the situation into his own hands and says, "Hey, remember that time I made a promise to you, I meant it. You're still going to have that son. No, I don't care that you took it into your own hands. You see, you may break promises, but I don't, ever."

I have to smile at the thought. So often to we come to a place where it looks as though God hasn't come through, in our minds it's too late and the situation has become impossible, so we take it into our own hands. Then, when it crumbles into a thousand pieces we wonder how we'll ever pick up that many pieces and put them back together again. I know I've been there and will come there again, but God doesn't break promises. He doesn't. He's never late. He doesn't forget and He doesn't need us to put the broken pieces back together to make everything work out. He is the Creator and He always has something for us if we'd just relinquish the hold we have on our failures. It's His joy to redeem and give. Even when it seems impossible, God has the ability to make a way if we'll just trust. If we'll just place the pieces in His hands and believe He'll make beautiful things out of dust. Trust that His will is better, His timing is better, and His way is beyond a shadow of a doubt, better.