Given a Sign
Genesis 24:12-14 Then he prayed, “O Lord, God of my master Abraham, give me success today, and show kindness to my master Abraham. See, I am standing beside this spring, and the daughters of the townspeople are coming out to draw water. May it be that when I say to a girl, ‘Please let down your jar that I may have a drink,’ and she says, ‘Drink, and I’ll water your camels too’ - let her be the one you have chosen for your servant Isaac. By this I will know that you have shown kindness to my master.”
God had called Abraham to come to the land of Canaan, and it would be there that God promised him to give him descendants as numerous as the stars and through him would come one that would bless the earth. All Abraham had to do was to trust, obey and worship the Lord as his God. The problem for Abraham and especially his son Isaac was that the people of Canaan worshiped idols, so Abraham couldn’t have his son marrying one of them or he might turn to worship idols too. This is why he sent his servant along with several others back to Nahor where he had come from to find a girl that would worship the Lord.
Abraham certainly had great trust in his servant to do this not only for his son’s happiness, but for the sake of his future descendants that would become kings and nations. Just the long journey with all the dangers was a daunting challenge, but to find just the right girl was even more so! The pressure was certainly on Abraham’s servant. He was wise, because he trusted in the Lord to show him the best one for Isaac.
What do you do when you have a hard decision in your life? Is it the same as you would do for a simple one? Chances are it’s not. Usually we go through our day making decisions without even thinking much about them and leave the consequences up to be pleased with or to fix later. This may work and it may not! Usually as I look back on my life the decisions I make without prayer ended up not as good as I would have liked. So why don’t we seek the Lord’s help with all our needs or decisions? It is probably because we are not disciplined in our decision making, or we think we can handle whatever needs to be done. Then sometimes we add this little disclaimer, “God is busy and he doesn’t need to be doing such insignificant things” Which in reality means that’s ok God I can handle this! NOT! I have learned that the more I ask God to help me the more he does, the better things turn out, and the more I can glorify and love him. God really doesn’t mind helping us in our daily life, and infact he really wants too. Just as you enjoy helping your children to do things, so does God for us. In fact remember how disappointed you felt when those little hands pushed your hands aside and said I can do this? Well, so does God. Remember he truly loves you more than you could ever know!
Well, how do we go about seeking God’s help, and know that what we see is his answer or not? Well, good question! But it is not a question that is impossible to answer, because God wants us to have the assurance and confidence to act in faith on his answer. The first thing is we must do is ask him. This may sound silly, but it is not. Most Christians assume that they don’t have to ask, and God will simply do things in their life to make it just wonderful. Well, to this I have two things we need to remember and they are; God will always respect our free will even after we get to heaven, and the next thing is that we have not because we ask not! (James 4:2)
How can we give credit to the Lord and thank him if we do not ask him? We can’t and don’t as a rule. The next thing is we need to be as specific as possible. Sometimes we are so general in our prayer that we can’t see God answering us if it was right in front of us. It would be like going to a restaurant and holding the menu in our hand and never looking at it to make a specific request, but simply saying give me something and then expect the food to come back exactly what we went in to get. We don’t have to worry about making things too hard for God. God can handle anything you may ask.
Now we need to start looking with expectation for God’s answer. In doing this we need to keep in mind that God will always do what is best for us! You may be asking for a new car and assume that you will get a rusty old used car, and God brings and new shiny Corvette. And then, it may be the other way around. Ha! Well, how do we know if it is really from God. I’ve learned that we never have to kick a door open that God has opened for us, and we will have peace and excitement about it. We can expect God to put up warning signs for us if we are not correct in assuming that what we are doing is from him. When we ask for God’s help he will help us throughout the entire process. We just need to trust him and be patient. God will never be late, although he is not always early. Ha!
Lastly, don’t be afraid to ask for a difficult sign from him in confirmation especially if it is a very important decision. God is not offended at all. After all it was a huge thing for Abraham’s servant to expect a girl to not only offer him water, but to water all his camels as well. That was a lot of work and few would offer let alone do it. We see the same type of conformations with Gideon in Judges 6 & 7. Remember God respects your free will and you will have not because you ask not. God is excited about helping you with the small things as well as the big things in your life. The important thing is we need to do is always be grateful and to thank him!
Prayer: Thank you Lord for being so good as to help us out in our everyday life. It is so easy to mess things up and have a life of regrets. We know we can trust you and you always have our best interest in mind. We love you Jesus!
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