Bethel Assembly of God- Clovis, New Mex.

Monday, September 6, 2010

"WHEN I LOOK AT ISAAC, I LAUGH!"

First there is the trial of our faith, then God comes on the scene with a creative miracle!  THAT creative miracle is followed by the creation of boundless joy and laughter!  What a God we serve!

Genesis 21:1-3 TM:  GOD visited Sarah exactly as he said he would; GOD did to Sarah what he promised.  Sarah became pregnant and gave Abraham a son in his old age, and at the very time God had set.  Abraham named him Isaac....

vv. 5-7:  Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born.  Sarah said, "God has blessed me with laughter and all who get the news will laugh with me!....Whoever would have suggested to Abraham that Sarah would one day nurse a baby!  Yet here I am!  I've given the old man a son! 

Romans 4:17-21:  Abraham was first named "father" and then BECAME a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do:  raise the dead to life, with a word making something out of nothing.  When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he COULDN'T do but on what God said he WOULD do.

Hebrews 11:11-12:  By faith, barren Sarah was able to become pregnant, old woman as she was at the time, because she believed the One who made a promise would do what he said.  That's how it happened that from one man's dead and shriveled loins there are now people numbering into the millions.

Beyond Five:  Psalm 126:1-3.  Prayer:  Create in me laughter and singing because You have done great things for me!