Don't Stand In The Way

You know that awesome feeling when someone puts to words a feeling you’ve been struggling to articulate? Joyce Meyer did that for me lately. She was talking about self-doubt. She said sometimes our doubt in God is really not about God because we know He can do all things, but our struggle is believing that God would do it for me. It made so much sense.

We are sometimes our worst enemies simply because we know absolutely everything about ourselves. The dark thoughts we harbour, the bad we do when (we think) no one’s watching. When we take all of that, and come to God, we can’t fully understand how He can get past it in order to do us good. There’s this song (Indescribable) that gets me every time with these words “You see the depths of my heart and you love me the same, you are amazing God.” Like it’s so amazing that God can do that, cause we only allow people to see the good of our hearts, the surface, that way they can accept us, they can see us normal enough to love and tolerate us. But God sees me at my lowest, without me even allowing Him to, He sees the filth and scum at the bed of the ocean of my heart but loves me as though He it’s not there. Not because He isn’t bothered by it, but because through His love He wants to help me with it. As said, 'God loves me just the way I am, but He loves me too much to leave me that way.' Believing Him when He approaches us at our lowest is an incredible task.

This made me understand Sarah’s frustration and struggle with doubt. To be barren was nothing small in that time (not that much has changed). A woman’s identity and purpose was attached to her ability to produce an heir. It was one of the most degrading things a woman could be (next to being raped). And it’s crazy because she has not chosen to be this, she has not contributed in any way to land herself in a battle with infertility. But it was the way it was, a married woman with no child was like a person walking around naked. No dignity, no pride, only shame. So that’s one, Sarah had the lowest self-esteem because of her struggle with and failure to infertility. No wonder she mistreated her surrogate.

Two, as time progressed, Sarah could no longer conceive because her eggs were all out. Process that. Imagine her on the first month, waiting for a period that would no longer come. Maybe for a bit she thought she was finally pregnant (they were no pregnancy tests back then). Maybe she even told Abraham what she thought, and he in excitement started sharing the news with his family. So imagine the disappointment as the months went on and no changes were seen or felt in her body, she must have crashed, realizing that it actually meant all hope was gone. She must have felt like a joke to have actually thought she would fall pregnant at her age.

Now against all this, God had made a promise. A promise that Sarah would have, not just a child, but children. And it was at this point of hopelessness that God came repeating the promise ‘At this time next year, Sarah will have a son.’ When Sarah heard this, she laughed, thinking to herself ‘After I am worn out and my master is old, will I now have this pleasure?’ (Genesis 18:12). For the first time I actually saw that Sarah’s reasoning had nothing to do with God and His ability but with her and her condition, and that of her husband’s. She was worn out, and that not only refers to her body, but to her emotional state of being. She was tired, having waited all her life, she just no longer had the energy to even think of having a child. Her husband was old. Able to have a child through a surrogate a few years earlier, his soldiers could now no longer run at the required speed. So it wasn’t a question of God doing it, but God doing it for her, she was the wrong person for this assignment, she wasn’t qualified.

She reminds me of the Shunammite woman who didn’t even want her time wasted by Elisha telling her she would have a child.

“Then Elisha said, ‘Call her.’ So he called her, and she stood in the doorway. About this time next year,’ Elisha said, ‘you will hold a son in your arms.’ ‘No, my lord,’ she objected. ‘Don’t mislead your servant, O man of God!” 2 Kings 4:15-16

In fact, when previously asked if anything could be done for her in return of her favour, she had indicated that she is settled and comfortable with her life as is and doesn’t need anything. Because sometimes it’s just easier to be settle and to stop wanting and believing for something that just might never happen. We get to a point where we bury our desires and object to anything that seeks to resurrect them.

But I love how that doesn’t stop God. The next verse says “But the woman became pregnant…” Aint that crazy? Without her approval or participation, God did it. My pastor said this the other week: You see, sometimes this is exactly where God wants us, where no one and nothing else can do for us what He’s willing to do, so He’ll let us get worn out, He’ll let us try and let our efforts be futile so we realized that it took place by God’s grace alone. So at Sarah’s point of realization that there was absolutely nothing she or her husband could contribute, she learned that it would take God and only God to do it. God poses a question to Sarah: ‘Is anything too hard for the Lord?’ (Genesis 18:14). Sarah had to get over herself and what she didn’t have and couldn’t do, and focus on God who could do absolutely anything.

So I should never stand in the way of what God wants to do for and through me by being obsessed with what I am not. I should trust in His ability and believe that He chose right when He chose someone with my kind of problem because His great power will be made perfect in my complete weakness.