Then the word of the Lord came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.” He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Genesis 15:4-5
God gave a visual lesson about the promise He made to Abraham. There are three things that stand out about this visual lesson.
This lesson was about to change Abraham’s limited vision
After years of waiting, Abraham’s focus had changed from God’s promise to nature’s probability. He had been looking at his old wife and their empty tent, which had led him to lose the vision of God’s greatness and His miraculous power. Therefore, God called him to go outside. Abraham had to leave his familiar tent to go outside and get a renewed vision of how God saw the situation.
Stars are not something that Abraham could create or reproduce
God created the galaxies and the constellations, and they appear at His pleasure. It was God’s desire to give Abraham the promise, and it was His pleasure to accomplish it. Man can do nothing to make the stars appear, and neither could Abraham produce a child. God was going to accomplish this promise, and it was not dependent on Abraham’s or Sarah’s ability.
Abraham could not count the number of stars
What God planned to do in Abraham’s life was going to go beyond his ability to understand, control, or measure! Hallelujah.
In our performance driven culture, Sometimes we tend to look at God’s promise as a goal to be accomplished. We try to perform in order to achieve or fulfill God’s promise. However, that’s not scriptural. Our partnership with the Lord is not based on accomplishing the promise; it is by being yielded to Him on daily basis.
I love God’s object lessons. From time to time, we need to recapture God’s greatness by spending time and meditating on the amazing and orderly creation He has made. In those moments, God can renew our vision for who He is and what He plans to do in our lives.
