I was walking through a back alley in Old Delhi, India.
Electric wire twisted and turned above me like jungle vines. Street vendors
stood in dark corners, trying to shade their raw meat from the blazing sun.
Street children ran to and fro, some stopping to beg for any lose change we
might toss their way before they ran off after their friends.
Pray as you walk. That was our instructions. But as the
aroma of incense and human waste burned my nose and I watched a woman bow
before a ceramic statue of Ganesh, an elephant with four arms, my heart
shattered within me and words ceased to exist. All I knew in that moment was
the most intense despair I had ever experienced in my life
.
God’s unyielding passion for His glory and the excitement of
being a part of His plan to redeem the nations had driven me to India. Yet, as
the end of my third week in country approached, the heaviness of millions of
people who had never heard the name of Jesus flattened my soul. Would another
prayer for yet another person to hear and know Jesus really make any dent?
There are so many circumstances around us that can lead us
to feel hopeless. Another
school shooting, a beloved church family shattered by divorce, sick family
members, neighborhoods wrecked by poverty. It’s all around us every day.
Abraham lived in a pagan world. He didn't know what Jesus
would one day do. He had no track record of God’s character to read about. He
struggled just to understand how he would start a nation still without a son of
his own, let alone to see how God would bless all the families of the earth
through him. Yet, against all hope, Abraham in hope believed.
“Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed
and so became the father of many nations, just
as it had been said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’ Without
weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as
dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also
dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise
of God, but was strengthened in
his faith and gave glory to God, being
fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.” Romans 4:18-21
There were no clear answers, no game plan to follow, no logic
to rest upon. Yet Abraham, against all hope, IN HOPE, believed God would do
what He said He would. Abraham faced all the impossibilities, yet he did not
waver in unbelief. No, instead he was strengthened in his faith and gave glory
to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what He had promised.
As our families engage with hurting and hopeless people in
our neighborhoods, as we pray for far-away peoples who have no access to the
gospel, we face soul-flattening discouragement. We can feel helpless in a giant
world of need. Our children may feel it most, feeling too small to do anything
that matters.
Knowing that the Savior of the world has indeed come, we can follow
Abraham’s lead. We can demonstrate and pass on to our children a faith that is
fully persuaded that God has the power to do what He has promised. He redeems.
He restores. He saves.
And our families, though small in comparison to the world we
are trying to reach, have the power and influence to make a difference…in the
back alleys of India, in the suburbs of California, in the rural farms of the
south. Why? Because in the end, it wasn't anything about Abraham that accomplished the promise God made to him. It was
God himself, working through Abraham’s willing heart, despite human frailty and
failures, to accomplish His purposes.
