Rigtheous Faith Series

[This is part of a series on Reinhold Niebuhr's prayer "The Serenity Prayer" (long or full version). This sermon is based on the line, "trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His will."]

Abram and Lot stood on the ridge and looked out over the Jordan valley. To the right was the lush plain of the Jordan and to the left were the drier lands of the Canaan region. “Choose which way you want to go,” Abram told his nephew Lot. “If you go to the right then I will go to the left.” Let’s take a moment to see what brought Lot and Abram to this moment.

As you know, we’ve been going through Reinhold Niebuhr’s prayer, “The Serenity Prayer” and so far we’ve looked at:

• God … grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.

• God … grant me the courage to change the things I can.

• God … grant me the wisdom to know the difference.

• Living one day at a time.

• Enjoying one moment at a time.

• Accepting hard as a pathway to peace.

• Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it.

And now, we’re looking at the part of the prayer that says, “Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His will.”

All of this started for Abram and Lot when God asked Abram to pack up his family, including his nephew, Lot, and leave his home, leave his country, leave his roots, his kin and head to a land that Abram had never been to before. In fact, he didn’t even know where he was going. God said “Go” and he just “went.” Talk about trusting that God will make all things right if he surrendered to God’s will, amen?

When they came to the region of Canaan, the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land” (Genesis 12:7) … so Abram built an altar to God there at Bethel and then “journeyed on by stages toward the Negeb” (Genesis 12:9). So far, Abram has taken that giant leap and put his total trust in the Lord and it appears that things are going to work out for Abram, except …

A really bad famine strikes the land and Abram decides, in the words of the Bible, to head to Egypt and “reside there as an alien” (Genesis 12:10). Now, let’s pause here for moment. Abram is a shepherd, who are nomadic because of the nature of their work, their livelihood … which is constantly searching for water and good pasture for their sheep. When Abram arrived in the land of Canaan, the Lord appeared to him and said, “Welcome home. Your wandering days are over.” But when the famine came, Abram decided to trust the Egyptians to take care of him and his family. The Bible says that he chose to live as an “alien” … as a non-resident in a foreign land rather that stay on the land, the new home, that God had given him. He was no longer “trusting” that God would take care of him, that God would make all things right if he stayed at the place where God had brought him.

Nor does he trust that God will make all things right, that God will take care of him in Egypt either. In fact, he’s convinced that someone might kill him and steal his beautiful wife, Sarai. You see, in order to “surrender” my will to God’s will, I have to, well, “trust” God, don’t I? Before I let a surgeon operate on me, I want to know his or her background. I want to know that I can trust them before I go under the knife, amen? Does is sound like Abram trusts God here? Listen carefully to what Abram says to Sarai: “I know well that you are a woman beautiful in appearance; and when the Egyptians see you they will say, ‘This is his wife’; then they will kill me, but they will let you live” (Genesis 12:11-12). They will kill me … but they will let you live. Hummm. “Say you are my sister, so that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared on your account” (Genesis 12:13). “Say that you are my sister, so that it may go well with ME because of you, and that MY LIFE be spared on your account.” Again, hummm. Actually, it turns out that what he says if prophetic but in a way that he never could have imagined because, well, God’s ways are not our ways … His thoughts are not our thoughts. Abram’s life is spared, and he becomes very wealthy because of her.