Abram to Abraham - Father of Faith

When God promised Abraham that he would become the father of many nations, Abraham believed him.  God had also said, "Your descendants will be as numerous as the stars," even though such a promise seemed utterly impossible!  And Abraham's faith did not weaken even though he knew that he was too old to be a father, at the age of one hundred and that Sarah, his wife, had never been able to have children.
- Romans 4:16-19

As I read the chapter and came across these verses, I had been thinking of a friend and praying for his family as he has been going through the toughest time in his life.  As I was reading over these scriptures, I couldn't help but think, it was the faith and obedience of Abraham more so than Sarah's that gave Abraham a son through his wife, and made Sarah a mother.  When the name Abraham is mentioned in the Bible, the word faith is somewhere close by. The Bible calls him the "Father of Faith," but it does not refer to Sarah as, "the Mother of Faith." She is known by many names, as the daughter of Terah (Genesis 20:12), a half sister of Abraham, wife of Abraham, mother of Isaac and mother of many nations, but not as a woman who had extraordinary faith in the God who called and separated Abram and his household from his father's family residing in the Ur of the Chaldees (ancient Mesopotamia) to make a nation out of his descendants.

The Bible states that when God told Abraham something, "he believed." In Genesis 15 we read when God appeared to Abraham in a vision and told him that he was going to bless him. Abraham asked God what good would all the blessing in the world mean to him when he did not have even a son to pass it down to. His servant Eliezer was going to inherit all of Abraham's wealth absent an heir.  We read then, "The LORD said to him, 'No, your servant will not be your heir, for you will have a son of your own to inherit every thing I am giving you.'"  Then the LORD brought Abram (this was his name before God changed it to Abraham) outside beneath the night sky and told him, "Look up into the heavens and count the stars if you can.  Your descendants will be like that--too many to count!" And Abram believed the LORD, and the LORD declared him righteous because of his faith.  (Genesis 15:4-6)

Abram believed God though he knew that Sarai was barren. (Genesis 11:30).  Ten years into the promise, Sarah, as she had not yet conceived, offered her maid servant Hagar to Abraham to sleep with and father a child who would be adopted as their son. Then in the 24th year after God first promised a son to Abram and Sarai, God appeared to Abram and Sarai twice and renewed his promise.  During the first visitation from God, he changed their names to Abraham and Sarah. The name "Abram" meant "exalted father" and the name "Abraham" meant "father of many."  The name "Sarai" meant "my princess" and the name "Sarah" meant "princess." Aside from renewing His covenant with Abraham, God asked Abraham to circumcise all the males in his household including his servants and himself as part of their agreement to obey the terms of God's covenant with Abraham. God told that anyone who refused to be circumcised will be cut off from the covenant family for violating the covenant.

We read that on that very day that God spoke to Abraham, Abraham took his son Ishmael (through the maid servant Hagar) and every other male in his household and circumcised them, cutting off their foreskins, exactly as God had told him. Abraham was 99 years old at the time.

After Abraham's obedience to God's covenant, God visited Abraham a second time the same year and told him, "About this time next year I will return, and your wife Sarah will have a son." Sarah was within earshot of this conversation and overheard all that was said. We read, "Now Sarah was listening to this conversation from the tent nearby.  And since Abraham and Sarah were both very old, and Sarah was long past the age of having children, she laughed silently to herself.  'How could a worn out woman like me have a baby?' she thought. 'And when my master--my husband--is also so old?'"  Then the LORD said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh? Why did she say, 'Can an old woman like me have a baby?'  Is anything too hard for the LORD? About a year from now, just as I told you, I will return, and Sarah will have a son.  Sarah was afraid, so she denied that she had laughed.  But he said, "That is not true.  You did laugh." (Genesis 18:10-15)

My intentions are not to play up Abraham's faith and play down Sarah's faith, for as we read the sections of Genesis which talks about them, time and again we see Abram/Abraham's faith wavered in fear for his life, as when he first left his father's household upon God calling him out and was traveling through the Pharaoh's land, he lied to the Pharaoh that Sarai was his sister (though technically correct as a half-sister, she was his wife at that point); he agreed with Sarai when he slept with her maid, Hagar, for an heir after 10 years of not having a child through Sarai though God had promised him a son through Sarai; he lied again in front of King Abimelech that Sarai, now Sarah following God's visitation and changing their names, was his sister for fear for his life.  But even as his faith wavered from time to time, the depth of his faith in his God is shown in his prompt obedience to God's commands for separation, consecration, and sacrifice, that culminated in his actions of obedience when God asked for Isaac as a sacrifice. His faith resulted in God's promise bearing a fruit in the barren womb of Sarah.

My dear friend, take courage from Abraham and Sarah's life story.  Your faith will bear fruit over the barren situations in your family life for God is passionate about his relationship with you.  God bless you and yours!!!!

PS: Another blog on Abraham, click here.