How to Handle Dead Ends Romans 4:16-21
Oftentimes things do not always go as planned! At times, life is filled with dead ends. There are occupational dead-ends, financial dead-ends, relationship dead-ends, legal dead-ends – many and various dead-ends.
How do you know when you have come to a dead-end in your life? You know it when things look hopeless. When you realize that God is going to have to perform a miracle for things to come out right!
What do you do when you come to a dead-end? Quite simply, do what Abraham did what he faced a dead-end.
Abraham left Ur in present-day Iraq, when he was 75 years old. At age 75 God called him to leave everything he knew, everything he was familiar with, everything he was comfortable with and go to a place that God would show him.
God promised Abraham a son through whom many nations would come. Yet at 99 years of age no heir had yet been born. At 99 it would seem that he was at a dead end.
How do you handle dead-ends?
You handle it like Abraham did. Note how Abraham handled his dead-ends!
I. Remember What God’s Can Do (17).
Don’t dwell on what you cannot do. Dwell on what God can do! Don’t dwell on the situation. Don’t fixate on the impossibility! Don’t look at what you can’t solve.
Instead of panicking focus on God.
Notice that Abraham believed God!
Faith is not just a positive mental attitude. It is not hoping or wishing.
Did you notice that our text speaks of two things only God can do. God making alive dead ones and calling things not being, being.
Only God…
• Gives life to the dead
• Calls into being things that do not exist
In Luke 18:27 Jesus said, "The things which are impossible with men are possible with God." God specializes in the impossible!
We serve a great God and there is nothing too hard for Him.
The first thing we want to do when we are at a dead-end in our lives is to remember what God can do!
II. Recall What God Has Said (18).
Find a promise in God’s Word and hold on to it. You won’t have any trouble finding one. There are over 7000 promises in the Word of God. God has placed them there for our benefit.
“ Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be
When hope was dead, Abraham believed in hope. Ninety-nine of age and no heir, yet Abraham still believed. If Abraham had only believed in what his senses conveyed to him – what he could see, feel, touch, smell – all hope would have been gone. Instead, he trusted what God had said.
Focus on what God has promised!
In Hebrews 11 we read that when Abraham was told to offer Isaac as a sacrifice he did not panic. When facing this seemingly dead-end situation he believed the promises of God (Hebrews 11:17-19).
Abraham didn’t panic because he realized that God would keep His promise even if it meant raising Isaac from the dead. Remember what Abraham told his servants when he and Isaac began climbing the mountain.
"I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you," (Genesis 22:5).
Sometimes when we hit dead-ends we begin to panic. But that is the time God says “Trust Me, believe My word.”
Promises are only as good as the One making the promise, and if God is making a promise you can be sure He will keep it!
III. Resist The Facts With Faith (19).
Faith does not pretend there is no problem. Faith confronts and challenges the facts with faith.
In spite of the facts, Abraham “…staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strong in faith, giving glory to God.”
Faith does not deny difficulty. The denial of difficulty is fantasy.
Abraham never denied his circumstances, but he did defy them. Faith is not convincing yourself that things don’t exist when they do or that things do exist when they don’t. The Bible never calls on us to ignore reality. Rather, it calls on us to put our faith in the Lord of reality. In other words, faith doesn’t declare the circumstances and natural barriers to be non-existent. Faith simply declares that God is not shackled by them as we are.
Faith is facing the difficulty but realizing that our God is greater than any difficulty that can ever be thrown at us.
In this case Abraham was to old to have a child. Yet Abraham believed God in spite of the circumstances.
Faith means you face the facts and aren’t discouraged by them but that you believe in the God who is bigger than the facts.
The key to keep from getting discouraged is to look beyond the circumstances you are facing.
Don’t look inward you’ll be disgusted.
Don’t look at others you’ll be disappointed.
Don’t look backward you’ll be defeated.
Don’t look at circumstances you’ll be disheartened.
Don’t look at blessings you’ll be diverted.
Look at Jesus, you’ll be delighted.
So much depends on our focus!
IV. Reckon On God To Act (20,21).
In spite of the facts, Abraham did not waver at the promise of God.
He rested wholly upon God’s performance of what He had promised. As far as Abraham was concerned there was only one impossibility, and that was for God to lie.
Abraham expected God to act!
He did not know how God would come through, but that was incidental. He just expected God to come through.
The only type of faith that will work when you have a dead end situation is a personal faith. If there is not a living, dynamic faith, if it is not real and personal and based on God and His Word, your faith will fail in a difficult situation.
Conclusion
Dead ends will come, how will you handle them?
