Always Being able to Learn:

The people we read about in the Bible really showcase a lot of different characteristics to us, its readers.  There is such a wide array of characters that are filled with bravery, hope, faith, but then there are also a lot of characters filled with anger, bitterness, and cowardice.  The other interesting thing about the Bible is that it really shows us the people’s stories from having moments of sin and completely missing the mark to being a champion of the faith.  The Bible gives us a realistic picture of humanity and what we all look like.  We have moments where we completely are filled with sin and make many mistakes to moments where we are filled with God’s spirit.  

At church this Sunday morning, we continued on our conversation and life story of Sarah and Abraham.  Today, we were in Genesis 20.  This was another time where Abraham would lie about who his wife Sarah was.  If you have ever read the book of Genesis, or if you have been following along in my blog post recaps of what we have been learning in church, you may realize that this is the second time when Abraham lied about who Sarah was.  This is the second time he has said that she is his sister as opposed to his wife, and this is also the second time that it has not worked out as he had originally planned. 

Abraham and Sarah were traveling through the land of Gerar.  Along the way, Abraham told Sarah to again pretend to be his sister.  He didn’t want someone to kill him and take Sarah to be their own wife, so instead he lied, and the King Abimelech took Sarah to be his wife.  However, nothing would really last long or happen before the Lord came to Abimelech and told him that Sarah was actually married to a man named Abraham.  The king was not impressed.  He would not have taken Sarah as his wife if he had known she was already married. Abimelech was then commanded to find Abraham, so he could reestablish the husband and wife.  

Something my pastor pointed out to us this morning was that this time he lied about who his wife was, was actually about 20-30 years apart from the original time he had lied about his wife.  Abraham had grown so much in his faith, yet he still went back to an old trick and an old lie that he had told many years prior.  Why had he told the same lie?  He had the same fear.  He had the fear of the people of Gerar and the king of the people.  Because of this, he took control as opposed to giving the control over to God.  Even though he had been growing in faith, he showed we are always growing and learning, even as we have been in the faith for years.  

This also brought me to thinking about a chapter I was recently reading with my Bible Study, Mere Christianity by C.S Lewis.  There was a chapter that is dedicated to the Great Sin which is pride. Because of pride, we can easily avoid admitting our need for help.  We may not want to admit that we need to change something about ourselves.  One quote I want to highlight from this chapter is,  “For Pride is a spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.”  Having a lot of pride can make it hard to grow our relationship with God.  Pride can be blinding.  We can stop seeing the things that don’t make sense or the evil in the world and actions because of pride.  

Sometimes we can have too much pride to really want to change our actions or evaluate our thought patterns that lead to some of our actions.  Another quote from the book of Mere Christianity is “As long as you are proud, you cannot know God.”  Taking the time to evaluate our actions and the things that we can learn is the first step.  Realizing we are proud can help us become aware of how desperately we need God and how we need him to grow.  

Getting back to the story of Abraham in Genesis, we actually discover that there is a happier ending than where it was originally headed.  Abraham meets up with the king, Abimelech when he brings him back to his wife.  Abimelech is at first upset, and he asks Abraham why he didn’t tell him that Sarah was his wife in the first place.  He says that he could have gotten himself in a lot of trouble through marrying a woman who is already married.  We learn, as well as Abraham, that even though this culture of Gerar may not be considered Yahweh followers, they do value marriage, and they have overall good morals. 

Abraham was honest with Abimelech that he was afraid of being killed and being in trouble with them.  He didn’t want to be killed because of his beautiful wife. He was very fearful.  Abimelech listened to Abraham and would eventually give him land and let him stay in the area for a long time.  He gave him back his wife and he never killed him in the hopes of grabbing Sarah back.  We see that all Abraham was fearful of, did not come to fruition because God ultimately had a plan.  

As the pendulum constantly is swinging, we will see in later chapters that Abimelech and Abraham’s relationship isn’t perfect, but that doesn’t mean we can’t gather great information from this particular interaction.  Abraham who was a child of God learned a valuable lesson from someone who wasn’t.  He learned something as a man of older age, and he learned from a mistake that he had made many times before.  The point is, you can actually teach an old dog new tricks.  It can be hard because we are sometimes more stubborn as we get older and filled with more pride, but there is alway something to learn and there are always more ways to grow.  

My challenge for you this week is to think about something you have recently learned.  Write it down or tell a friend.  What is something that you have learned through either personal study with God or with a fellow believer.  What are some ways you have grown in the past week?  Celebrate that growth! It is important to realize that amidst our trials and tribulations, as well as the shame that can so easily creep into our lives, it is important to find the ways that God is working amongst us for the good.  It is uplifting to see the fruit that he is bearing in each and every one of our lives.