Well, did you spot some more spiritual gifts in Abraham? I spotted two in his actions with Lot. You will be getting official definitions of them in the future. The study will highlight twenty spiritual gifts. Faith, the one we highlighted yesterday, is #10. I saw Nurturing Leadership ("those who lead gy sheltering, guiding, modeling, and other parenting-type behavior"), which is #6. Lot was not necessarily a good study, but Abraham was careful to give him opportunities to grow, including allowing him to make decisions and learn from the consequences. As we shall see, the choices Lot made for settling his family appeared to be good, but they were actually not good at all. We'll read more about that later. The other gift I see in Abraham is wisdom ("mature and skillful judgement...the ability to see the ramifications of problems and then sift among possible alternatives to find solutions that are in accordance with God's intentions."), #8 of the 20. Wisdom does come with experience, but not all experiences become wisdom for everyone. We just keep repeating our mistakes and continue in our dysfunctional patterns. We need folks with the gift of wisdom to help us.
Genesis 15-17
You may remember from our first class the three D's of spiritual gifts - Discovery, Development and Deployment. We grow in our spiritual giftedness as we follow Christ, and the process usually has lots of trial and error. In Genesis 15, we discover a complication, the man from whom a mighty nation is to be born as a blessing to the world has a wife who cannot become pregnant. Notice Abraham's language in verse 3: "You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir." God tells Abram, "This man will not not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir." If you have read Genesis 16, you know that the writer of Genesis is preparing us for what we read there. But, for now, we are told that Abram believed the LORD, "and credited to him as righteousness." That doesn't mean that Abram didn't doubt. In verse 8, he doubts quite boldly. But his doubt is not mere skepticism, it is an attempt to understand. Doubt can often be part of the process of growing in our faith.
Abram is put into a deep sleep and God reveals to him what the future holds for this people of whom we will be the father. God does bolster our faith when we need it.
The problem with learning how to use the gifts of faith and wisdom is that we start to think that they are "our" gifts and it is all up to us. Spiritual gifts are the manifestations of God's presence in our lives, and are primarily not what we do for God, but what God does in and through us. When we make it about us and decide that everything is up to us, we tend to get in God's way. Sarai and Abram get frustrated and take God's promises and plan in their own hands and create a disaster that is with the world to this day (the Arab-Israeli conflict). Admittedly, God ends up creating two great peoples in this situation, as he often does work in spite of us when he cannot work with us. Now we are dealing with another spiritual gift, one that I did not place in my top tier - patience. Admittedly, the story stretches us because Ishmael is born 11 years after the promised of fatherhood to Abram and it will be another 14 years before Isaac is born.
Genesis 17 describes the covenant of circumcision, the sign that makes every Jewish man remember who and whose he is. God does it to Abram and then Abram does it to all the males in his household. It also reminds him of who he no longer is. Baptism does the same for you and me.
Abraham is then told once again that Sarah will have a child, to which Abrahm responds with derisive and painful laughter. God commands Abraham (his new name following circumcision) to call the child "Isaac" when he his born, which means "he laughs." Everytime Abraham calls his name, he will remember the faithfulness of God, and how important it is to not take the plans of God into our own hands.
Where is Abrahamn's story like yours?
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