Strolling Down the Path of Self-Effort

Have you ever found yourself moving along fabulously with God? It seems that His presence is all over what you are doing and you are rocking and rolling in the spirit. Then all of a sudden things stall. At first, your reaction is that you just wait patiently a bit and God will be in what you are doing again. After all, He began the work. It was His direction and promise that you are following. No problem, He’ll show up again.

Then time lags on and you think to yourself ‘well maybe I am supposed to step out and just do something. Maybe it is my fault why nothing is happening.’ You seek godly counsel and they tell you all manner of conflicting opinions. You are confused and conclude ‘well this seems logical and sound, so I will just step out and do this.’ You have just started down the wrong path. The path of self-effort.

Don’t feel badly about this, there were some heroes of our faith who did the same thing. Take Abram. God told him he would be the father of many nations. Being childless this probably was a puzzle to him. One day, when he was like 100, his wife comes to him with an idea. Why don’t you have a child through my maidservant Hagar? It will be like our own and we can get the ball rolling on the “father of many nations” thing. Well Abram took the bait and unfortunately things went downhill from there. He took the wrong path.

God’s intention was for Him to bring the child through His own miraculous intervention. It was to be an extraordinary event that only He could get the credit for. Unfortunately Abram’s faith waivered in what God could do. He knew God could provide what he needed for provision as when He gave him the land to possess but this was beyond what he could believe God for. He figured that He would help God out.

So can you relate? Have you ever found yourself feeling a bit impatient with God’s pace? Have you ever thought that you needed to help God along? Have you ever listened to someone else’s advice and found yourself totally out of the will of God in a snap?

You should be encouraged to know that God is very patient with us when we are inpatient with Him. After this bitter fiasco, God comes to Abram and confirms His covenant to him and again reminds him of his promise.

“Then God said, ‘Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descents after him.” Genesis 17:19

God is faithful to His promises to us. We don’t need to strive to make them happen. He will fulfill the purpose that He has planned for us. It is encouraging to know that God understands our impatience and that He doesn’t remove His promises to us but steers us back so that we are positioned to receive them. We don’t need to feel badly about our mistakes, but we do need to learn from them. Apparently Abram learned his lesson since he didn’t try that again. In fact, it was 14 years between the birth of Ishmael (Hagar’s son) and the birth of the son of the promise Isaac.

Have you ever strayed from the path of God’s promise to you? Have you grown impatient and opted to take matters into your own hands? Have you found yourself striving with God? Do you think you might have strayed off of the path that God has for you because of your own self effort? If that is the case, don’t spend your time beating yourself up but turn to God and ask Him to bring you back and confirm His promise to you. He is faithful and He will do it!

“Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?” Galatians 3:3