Crisis of Faith

I am trying (once again) to read through Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy this summer because I will be studying these books in BSF starting in the fall. Today I was reading about Abram. What struck me about him today is that he had some very ordinary, very normal "crisis of faith" trials. What I mean is, he was alot like me and you. He trusted God, he loved God, one could probably say he was fully dedicated to God, but if Abram couldn't figure out how God was going to accomplish a task, he decided to take it into his own hands. When he and Sarai went to Egypt to ride out the famine, he couldn't figure out how God would protect him because of his wife's beauty. So instead of being excited about the fact that God was going to perform a cool miracle, he decided to take matters into his own hands and come up with a ridiculous solution. A solution that caused his wife to have to sleep with another man! God obviously had a different plan. He had promised Abram land and descendants more than he could count so God wasn't going to go and let him get killed by some lustful Egyptians. But instead of standing on God's promise, Abram took matters into his own hands and created a royal mess (Yes, the pun is intended)!

After this crisis, Abram's faith did grow enough to take his household men and defeat an entire army in order to get Lot back. And he gave God all the glory for this, but it wasn't too long before he fell back into the same crisis of faith. He let Sarai talk him into sleeping with Hagar (probably not that hard to do). We try and rationalize Abram's behavior by saying that he was worried because of his age and because Sarai was barren, but Abram's dad live to be 205 and Abram wasn't even 100 yet. And yes, Sarai was barren, but she was barren the day that God promised him a son! Why believe God then and not now?

The thing is, I think it is because Abram was an ordinary person like you and me. He loved God with all his heart and wanted to follow Him, but Abram was human, with all the frailty that comes with that state of being. This, strangely enough, is what gives me encouragement. If God is willing to use a man with some of the very some faults that I have to bring about His chosen people and to change the world, then He can use me. And if Abram can come back from these "crisis of faith" moments and grow in his faith to the point that he is able to obey God even to the point of sacrificing his one and only son, then my faith can grow like that too.

The promise God made to Abram was that He would make Abram famous. I don't want to be famous, but I do want to live an extraordinary life in Christ. I want Him to be able to use me in crazy and amazing ways because I have the faith to be obedient in all things, even when I can't see the outcome. I hope that when I can't see the outcome, that I will get excited, knowing that God is going to do something great and surprising. Lord, make my faith grow surprising proportions so that I can be your vessel to do surprising things.