The Purposes of God

WHEN we are in the place where God wants us, we often expect that God is going to bless us for it. We expect that we are going to be free from all testings and trials. In the life of Abram God makes a great revelation. After a brief respite in the land of Canaan at Bethel, God comes and says, as it were, “Abram, this is only the beginning of your journey of faith. That test I gave you in the past was only to steel and to prepare you, and to make you able to bear even a greater test, and here it is: a famine in the land of plenty.”

What does Abram do? He goes down into Egypt. Down, down, down “to Egypt to dwell there, for the famine was severe in the land.” – Genesis 12:10. Abram, the man of faith, failed God. Now God knew that Abram was going to fail, and God could have kept him from failing. God could even have prevented this temptation from coming, but the fact is that God did allow it to come and did permit Abram to fall. We need to recognize this great fundamental truth, that God permitted Abram to be tempted and to fall, knowing that he would make this grievous error and commit a great sin, in order that God might use even this failure and this sin as a means of teaching Abram a still greater lesson which might prevent a still greater tragedy in his life later on.

God always has a purpose for the lives of those who are dedicated to Him.

Adapted and modified excerpts from Studies in the Life of Abraham by M. R. De Haan (1891-1964)
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.