Daily Bible Reading Plans to help you read and understand God’s Word

Scripture Reading: Genesis 12:1-5, Genesis 21:1-5, Genesis 22:15-18, Galatians 3:7-9, Galatians 3:14-16

Over the years, I’ve tried my best to treat my promises with care. There’s nothing quite like the pain of an unmet promise.

A friend who never calls after she promises she will text to get together.

A canceled family trip you had planned after guaranteeing much needed fun.

Waiting for a job offer that you were assured was yours.

And then there are those hopes that require us to trust God is working all things out for good. Those awaited promises are a bit gray, and we could spend a lifetime discerning the difference between the things we think we deserve and what God sees for our good.

Abraham and Sarah were also stuck in an anticipated promise. God said to Abraham, “I will make you into a great nation....I will bless those who bless you, I will curse anyone who treats you with contempt, and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you (Genesis 12:2–3).

I wonder if Abraham and Sarah stayed up some nights, plotting and dreaming how God was going to use them for such a great purpose. Maybe they thought it would be only a few months, a year at the most, to see what God would do next. Their story required many, many years before God acted.

Are you feeling stuck in an anticipated promise? There are seasons of waiting for the “next thing” to happen for all of us. All of Advent calls us to a discipline of practicing and remembering a long-awaited promise: the birth of our Savior.

It's easy to look back and see how God answered. It is more difficult when we are in the middle of unmet promises. We know that Sarah would give birth to a baby (Genesis 21) who would create a legacy of families and ultimately the family line of Jesus. But when Abraham and Sarah were in the waiting, the thing they needed the most was faith.

We need faith while we wait on the Lord. We need faith when things don’t go the way we expected. We need faith when our timeline doesn’t match up to God’s timeline.

Those who have faith, these are Abraham’s sons....Consequently, those who have faith are blessed with Abraham, who had faith.
—Galatians 3:7,9

And our faith rests on the covenantal promise given to Abraham: All nations will receive a restored relationship with God through Jesus. Abraham and Sarah had no idea what God was going to do, but they trusted Him and had faith. In the same way, we can remember how God is faithful to His promises and celebrate His faithfulness in this Advent season.

Written by Bailey Hurley