WHEN GOD SAID NO TO ABRAHAM

Post date: Aug 22, 2014 4:00:25 AM

Irrespective of your level of righteousness, faithfulness and love towards God and man, irrespective of your religious affiliations, activities, office and duties, God will never give approval to all of your request, all of your desire and all of your prayers. He will not say no to your entire request, will not say yes to all. His refusal to give approval to any of your dreams and words is not because He hates you, or He wants you to suffer indefinitely. His refusal is because of His love for you and His earnest desires to preserve you for the days of His coming glory. In every circumstance, God knows better than you will ever know; He sees better and farther than you will ever see; God wants the very best for you and will always reserve it till the day and time He deemed appropriate for you to have them. That was exactly what He did when Abraham presented a desire and a request to Him.

Abraham's push for the request was purely based on the knowledge of his inability to have a child through Sarah; his knowledge that he was getting old and the chances of his having a child of his own was all over, his knowledge that Sarah will never be able to conceive a child due to old age, and the knowledge that his servant had proved himself before him in faithfulness and ability.

God will not substitute you for anyone else; He will not substitute what is rightly yours despite the pressure from anyone because He knows you can and will be able to handle what He will do with you and give to you. You may have concluded that your dreams will never be fulfilled, that your desires will never come true and that your prayers will never be answered. You may have concluded that the promises of God were all lies and that you are a failure for depending on those promises; these conclusion are based on what you think and have seen and experienced over the years and your efforts had not proved otherwise, but despite your conclusion, God is still able to do as He had promised and as He had said.        

God did not just turn Abraham’s request down, but He gave reasons for saying no and Abraham accepted the reasons. When God says no to you, He will say it with love not with hate; when He says no, He will have a better purpose for saying so. God will never nurture any desire to keep you frustrated, weak and in pains at any time. Do not give up hope when things are tough and are beyond your reach, when expectations are not met as at when needed, when dreams seem to be far from being true even after several years of waiting, trying and planning, when God say no to you, He has something better.

This is what He said to Abraham: “And God said unto Abraham, As for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be. And I will bless her, and give thee a son also of her: yea, I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of people shall be of her. Then Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall a child be born unto him that is an hundred years old? And shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear? And Abraham said unto God, O that Ishmael might live before thee. And God said, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed; and thou shalt call his name Isaac: and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him. And as for Ishmael, I have heard thee: Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly; twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation. But my covenant will I establish with Isaac, which Sarah shall bear unto thee at this set time in the next year. And he left off talking with him, and God went up from Abraham.” Genesis 17:15-22

Abraham and Sarah’s age could not break the covenant that God had made with them; their delay in having Isaac could not compel God to substitute anyone else for Isaac, not even Ishmael despite the request. When God say to you, He has better plans and will do as He had intended. For prayers, Click here