09/13/2026
Last time, we followed Abraham through his development of trusting in God, with examples of partial obedience, full acts of faith, and outright disobedience. But that was only the beginning of the story, and only one part of what the story uncovers. Behind every promise, God gave Abraham a test of how far he'd let that promise take him, and what he'd be willing to do or give up to see it through.
Similar to how we first committed ourselves to Christ, Abraham had to anchor his faith in the promises God revealed to him. Before Abraham, the Bible established that the generations before him, including his father Terah, were either idol worshippers or idol makers. Letting go of the comfort of what Abraham knew to anchor himself into the promises of God is similar to what we did when we committed our lives to Christ. Genesis 12:2-3 ESV records it: "I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing… and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." Later, God takes him outside and points at the sky. Genesis 15:5 ESV, "Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them… So shall your offspring be." Abraham had nothing to base this on but God's word, and we get to see how true his promises are.
Although our experiences may differ from Abraham, we also have promises we can anchor our faith on. Here is a few:
The Holy Spirit living in us as a guarantee of what's still coming. Ephesians 1:13-14 ESV, "You were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance."
His promise to never leave us. Hebrews 13:5 ESV, "I will never leave you nor forsake you."
Being named heirs of the very promise given to Abraham. Galatians 3:29 ESV, "If you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise."
We weren't born into this the way Isaac was. We were grafted in, Romans 11:17 ESV, branches from a wild olive tree grafted into the root and richness of a tree that was never naturally ours. The God who kept His word to a man staring at the stars is the same God holding every promise He's made to us, planted into a promise line we didn't originate but now fully belong to.
Just as those promises anchor you now, Abraham needed something to anchor his own faith, and a good example of this is with God renaming him. When the promise gets reaffirmed years later, something else happens alongside it: God changes his name. Genesis 17:5 ESV, "No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations." Sarai becomes Sarah, "princess," mother of nations, Genesis 17:15-16. They were renamed before either promise had come true. Their identities got rewritten to match a future they couldn't see yet. God still does this with you. He calls you by who you're becoming in Him, even when you're at your worst, He still sees you at your best. He sees you in what you will become. I encourage you, anchor yourself in Jesus the way Abraham anchored himself to God. I've said this before: you may feel ordinary, but with God you are extraordinary. Step out in faith to become the person God already sees you as, and anchor yourself in those promises, even if they haven't come to pass yet.
Waiting on a promise is hard, especially when it's years or decades from when it was promised. To be honest, we often try to make God's promises happen through our own plans instead of His. Abraham and Sarah experienced this firsthand in Genesis 16, where Sarah gives Abraham her servant Hagar to conceive a child in her place. It's worth noting that Hagar was not part of God's original promise or plan; Genesis 16:1 and 16:3 emphasize that she was Egyptian. But once a son is born to Abraham through her, the promise language still attaches itself to that child. Genesis 16:10 ESV, an angel tells Hagar, "I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude." Hagar conceives, looks down on Sarah for her barrenness, and the household fractures almost immediately. Hagar flees into the wilderness, and there, alone, an angel of the Lord finds her. He names her unborn son, Genesis 16:11 ESV, "You shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has listened to your affliction." Ishmael means God hears. And Hagar, in that same moment, names God back. Genesis 16:13 ESV, "You are a God of seeing… Truly here I have seen him who looks after me." She calls the place Beer-lahai-roi, "the well of the Living One who sees me," Genesis 16:14.
This wasn't God's original plan, but once Abraham and Sarah acted in their own strength, God still granted it. He still saw Hagar. He still named Ishmael. He still multiplied him, just as promised. God can grant what we ask for even when it isn't His first design for us, but granting it doesn't erase what it costs. That cost is still playing out today. The tension between the line of Isaac and the line of Ishmael runs straight through the conflict between Israel and its neighbors in the Middle East right now, thousands of years later. What we ask God for outside His timing can still be given, and it can still outlive us in ways we never intended. And even in the middle of a mess of our own making, God still sees us, and His intended promise will come to pass.
Even when God's promises come to pass, that doesn't erase the past. In Abraham's life, this looked like two sons under one roof, one born by human effort and one born by promise. Genesis 21:9-10 ESV says Sarah sees Ishmael mocking, and tells Abraham, "Cast out this slave woman with her son, for the son of this slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac." That line matters more than it first appears. By birth order alone, Ishmael was the firstborn, (Abraham was 86 at that time in Genesis 16:16), while Isaac wasn't born until Abraham was 100 (Genesis 21:5). Under normal custom, the firstborn held the primary inheritance and the family standing. Ishmael would have held that place. But God overrides it directly, Genesis 21:12 ESV, "through Isaac shall your offspring be named." Years later, Genesis 25:5-6 shows exactly how it played out: "Abraham gave all he had to Isaac. But to the sons of his concubines… Abraham gave gifts… and sent them away." Ishmael received gifts, not inheritance. Isaac received everything, including the covenant that the promise runs through.
That's what's true for you too. You didn't earn a place in God's inheritance, but He offers it to you anyway, and He asks you to send away whatever's keeping you from it, the same way Abraham had to let go of what threatened God’s original plan. Send away the sin, the doubt, the fear of man, and anchor yourself in what God has promised you.
If it feels like you were the one sent out, that doesn't mean God's promises leave you out. Abraham brought his worry to God, and God told him He wouldn't abandon Ishmael either. Genesis 21:13 ESV says "I will make a nation of the son of the slave woman also, because he is your offspring." Genesis 21:18 promises the same again. Ishmael still gets his own blessing, a great nation and twelve princes, Genesis 17:20, but it's a different blessing than the one Isaac carries. The same mercy that named Ishmael in the wilderness the first time is still holding him now.
Sometimes God gives a stress test to see how anchored you are to His promises. For Abraham, that came in Genesis 22:2 ESV, when God tells him, "Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering." This is the son the entire promise runs through. Back in last week’s devotional, Abraham held back one piece of what God asked, bringing Lot along when he was told to leave his family behind, and it cost him dearly. Here, even though it hurts, he holds back nothing, not even the son he waited a lifetime to see born. When Isaac asks where the lamb is, Abraham answers, Genesis 22:8 ESV, "God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son." And He does, at the last possible moment, a ram caught in a thicket. Because of this, the promise gets sworn again. Genesis 22:16-18 ESV, "By myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this… I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven." Full obedience tested Abraham with the most precious thing he had. And God provided in that exact moment.
Put the whole story together and it looks like this. A promise believed before there was any proof of it. A new identity to match a future not yet seen. The temptation to make that promise happen on our own terms, and the real, lasting cost of choosing that shortcut. God's mercy reaching into the wilderness anyway, seeing what we thought was hidden. The promise finally arriving exactly the way God said it would. And at the very end, obedience with nothing held back at all.
His promises are true in the mountains and in the valleys. Hebrews 6:19 ESV calls this kind of hope "a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul." When your faith holds onto His promises, it holds like that anchor, unmoved no matter how wild the water gets.
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