Sarah was a doubter. And her story is unlike the others—that’s why I’ve saved her for last. Sarah’s name literally means “princess.” She had a lot going for her. Sarah had married a successful man named Abraham who had wealth, honor, and influence. In fact, if there had been a reality show called The Real Housewives of Canaan, Sarah would have been a member of the cast.
Yet even though Sarah had a lot of great things going in her favor, one major element was missing from her life. Sarah was barren. In all of her years with Abraham, she had never experienced the joy of becoming pregnant and having a child.
Being unable to have a child was one of the worst things that could happen to a woman in Sarah’s time and culture. Being childless carried a stigma of being under a curse. Despite all of the things that were going well for Sarah, her inability to conceive, incubate, and deliver new life had cast a dark shadow over her life.
Sarah’s physical reality that we read about in the Old Testament is a lot of people’s spiritual reality in the world we live in today. They may have a lot of things going for them—a successful career, a happy family, attractive looks, or a stockpile of material goods—but the ability to house the abundant life we’ve been given through Jesus Christ isn’t there. Instead, they live each day with a perpetual empty nagging inside that knocks at the door of a heart that has learned how to exist rather than to thrive.
They lack the capacity to have, hold, incubate, and celebrate life within themselves or with others. Going through the routine and the motions, their lives feel barren, stale, and lonely.
Barrenness can lend itself to many other ills. It can lead to hopelessness, depression, and doubt. String together enough days, weeks, or even years of barrenness, and a person can pretty much conclude that nothing is ever going to change. Most likely, that’s how Sarah felt at the age of 65 without having yet given birth to a child. I’m not a medical doctor, but I assume that if a woman hasn’t given birth by the time she’s 65 years old, she never will.
Unfortunately, Sarah assumed the same thing. And because she did, she failed to fully enjoy God’s promise when He made it. Instead, she laughed in disbelief.
Sarah was a doubter. But the interesting thing is that even though Sarah was a doubter, she still somehow ended up smack dab in the middle of the Hall of Faith in Hebrews 11.
Barrenness as a Lifestyle
But before we dive too quickly into Sarah’s story, I want to talk about you. We have dropped in on a number of people so far in our time together. We’ve taken a look at Moses the murderer, Rahab the harlot, Jacob, Jonah, Peter, Samson…and who could forget Esther the diva? We’ve seen how God redeemed situations, people, decisions, and personalities, manifesting His glory in and through them. But of all of the people we’ve looked at so far, I have a hunch that Sarah might be the one you will identify with the most. You may not be struggling with the same kind of barrenness that Sarah faced, but I have a feeling that if you picked up this book, you might be facing your own spiritual desert of sorts. Maybe you’re living in an extended period of time in which the life seems to have gone missing from your life.
Perhaps you feel lonely because you are relationally barren. Or perhaps you feel defeated because you haven’t yet reached your professional or personal goals. You lack productivity, drive, focus, or ambition. But more than that, you lack hope. It could be that you’ve even forgotten what it means to have a dream.
I challenged our Wednesday evening congregation a while ago to pursue the dream that God had placed within each of them. One of our members confided in me later that life had been so barren for so long, even if there once was a dream, it was now long gone—unable to even be recalled. Maybe you feel like this person. You can’t imagine what Jesus is referring to when He says that He has come to give you abundant life.
A beautiful illustration of abundant life walked into my office not too long ago. Both she and her husband came in just days before she was scheduled to give birth. Now, I have seen many pregnant women over the years around our church, but I have rarely seen anyone this pregnant. She couldn’t even walk. All she could do was waddle, rocking from side to side. I asked her how things were going with the baby, and her response explained everything.
“There’s not just one baby in here,” she said. “There are two.”
No wonder she had become so consumed with the life she was carrying. This lady wasn’t just carrying one life—she was carrying abundant life. This is exactly what Jesus says He came to give to each of us. The life Christ gives has the capacity to take over every area of your being. It can even change the way you walk. And yet many of us still walk around empty inside, as barren as Sarah.
Before God’s promise could come to fruition in Sarah’s life, she had to pass through a time of conflicted emptiness. Can you relate with her? Sarah’s emptiness was conflicted because she knew that God had promised her husband that He was going to make him a great nation. Yet God made that promise when Abraham, then called Abram, was 75 and Sarah, then called Sarai, was 65.
Go forth from your country,
And from your relatives
And from your father’s house,
To the land which I will show you;
and I will make you a great nation,
and I will bless you,
and make your name great;
and so you shall be a blessing;
And I will bless those who bless you,
and the one who curses you I will curse,
and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed
(Genesis 12:1-3).
God pronounced a blessing on Abraham. He promised him that through him, God was going to do something very special for the entire world. He said that He was going to make Abraham a great nation. But in order to become a great nation, Abraham first needed a son. Yet at 75 and 65 years old, Abraham and Sarah weren’t just old—at this point, they were cold. Even so, God told Abraham that in the middle of their barrenness, He was going to give them life.
At first, Abraham was confused, so he struck up a conversation with God to try to sort things out. Abraham understood the promise—that he was going to be a great nation—but at his age, he didn’t quite understand the process.
“O Lord GOD, what will you give me, since I am childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “Since You have given no offspring to me, one born in my house is my heir” (Genesis 15:2-3).
But God had other plans because God is not confined to the ways of man.
“This man will not be your heir; but one who will come forth from your own body, he shall be your heir.” And He took him outside and said, “Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be” (verses 4-5).
When Sarah found out about this promise, she concluded that God must not know much about biology. Maybe He’s confused, she assumed. Maybe He’s lost contact with the way things work on earth. Sarah realized that if a woman had been barren all her life, and she was now 65 years old, she was not going to have a baby. Things just didn’t happen that way.
So Sarah did what many of us often do—she tried to help God out. She believed His promise, or at least she believed that He had good intentions about His promise. But then Sarah took it upon herself to force that promise into reality. She came up with her own plan to bring about God’s plan because she thought that God couldn’t quite plan well enough on His own, especially when He had promised to deliver the impossible.
Now Sarai, Abram’s wife had borne him no children, and she had an Egyptian maid whose name was Hagar. So Sarai said to Abram, “Now behold, the LORD has prevented me from bearing children. Please go in to my maid; perhaps I will obtain children through her.” And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. After Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Abram’s wife Sarai took Hagar the Egyptian, her maid, and gave her to her husband Abram as his wife. He went in to Hagar, and she conceived; and when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her sight. And Sarai said to Abram, “May the wrong done me be upon you. I gave my maid into your arms, but when she saw that she had conceived, I was despised in her sight. May the LORD judge between you and me” (Genesis 16:1-5).
Sarah knew that God had promised to make Abraham a great nation, yet she also knew that as his wife, she hadn’t been able to produce a child for him. So Sarah decided to turn to a human solution in order to bring about a supernatural promise. And because she did that, Sarah changed neighborhoods from The Real Housewives of Canaan to Desperate Housewives, with all of the drama that came with the new show. A conflict quickly arose between Sarah and her handmaid, Hagar, as well as with Abraham simply because Sarah had involved someone in God’s plan that God had never said to include. God had made a promise. He hadn’t stuttered. Yet Sarah sought to bring about the product of God’s promise in her own way.
Many of us are a lot like Sarah. In fact, God has made promises to us that haven’t been realized in our own lives because we tried to take things into our own hands rather than allow God to carry out His own plan.
Did you know that God has given more than 3000 specific promises to His children and recorded them in the Bible? That’s enough promises to have a brand-new promise every day for more than a decade. Yet God’s promises haven’t come to pass in many of our lives because, like Sarah, we keep turning to human solutions to help God out. We look at His promises and make the assumption that God is obviously not living in the real world, because if He were, He would know that what He promised doesn’t happen in the real world. In the real world, we’re faced with real barrenness, real challenges, real heartache, real health issues, real strongholds, real brokenness, real layoffs, real bills, real betrayals, and real despair. And rather than trust God to come through on His Word, we frequently doubt Him by trying to make things happen on our own.
Just as Sarah did.
Yet so important is this issue of what Sarah did that thousands of years later, the apostle Paul picks up the story to emphasize a point. Paul wants to make unmistakably clear that as followers of Jesus Christ, we are not to force things to happen through human effort but rather to live under the freedom of the promise.
Tell me, you who want to be under law, do you not listen to the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the bondwoman and one by the free woman. But the son by the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and the son by the free woman through the promise…But what does the Scripture say? “Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be an heir with the son of the free woman.” So then, brethren, we are not children of a bondwoman, but of the free woman (Galatians 4:21-23,30-31).
In other words, Paul urges us as believers not to live our lives in bondage to the ways of our flesh. We are not to try to experience God according to a Hagar mentality. When we try to help God out by using a human approach to solve a divine problem, we lose or delay the divine solution that God has in store for us.
Friend, I have one piece of advice for you—don’t go “Hagar” on God. It’s easy to do just that when God doesn’t appear to be making sense or to be coming through on His promise, but appealing to the flesh will not gain the promises of the Spirit. Rather, appealing to the flesh will create chaos, disorder, and disunity in whatever circumstance, situation, or relationship you’re facing.
Just as it did with Sarah.
A number of painful years would pass as Sarah watched Ishmael, the child born to her servant Hagar, grow up before her. Every time Sarah heard Ishmael laugh or every time she saw him run past her tent during his daily activities, she was reminded of the choice she had made. Not only that, but she was also reminded of the promise God had made—to make Abraham into a great nation—and her failure as his wife to provide him with a child of that promise.
Day in and day out, year in and year out, Sarah only grew older. In fact, 25 years would pass between the announcement of God’s promise and its fulfillment. After 25 years of pain, emptiness, confusion, and obvious feelings of failure—even though they had tried everything humanly possible to bring God’s promise into life—Abraham and Sarah still didn’t have a child. And by looking at their response to God’s next statement to them about their promised child, it appears that neither of them considered that having a child was even a possibility anymore.
Now when Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before Me, and be blameless. I will establish My covenant between Me and you, and I will multiply you exceedingly…”
Then God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. I will bless her, and indeed I will give you a son by her. Then I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.” Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said in his heart. “Will a child be born to a man one hundred years old? And will Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?” And Abraham said to God, “Oh that Ishmael might live before You!” (Gensis 17:1-2,15-18).
God changing Sarai’s name to Sarah in this passage is significant. In the Bible, naming something was more than a matter of nomenclature. Naming something created or defined its identity.
The name Sarah literally means “princess” or “noblewoman.” God clearly said that kings of peoples would come from Sarah. In order for a king to be a king, he must come from a royal line. In changing Sarai’s name to Sarah, God established Sarah as a royal “mother of nations.” God specifically declared that something incredibly special was going to happen through Sarah. In doing so, God gave Sarah much more than a name. He gave Sarah her destiny.
But at 90 years of age, Sarah’s destiny didn’t look like a plausible reality. If Sarah couldn’t get pregnant at the age of 65, how did waiting an additional 25 years make it more likely that she could conceive a child by Abraham? To the average viewer of Sarah’s drama, her destiny appeared to be no more than a dream.
But God wasn’t finished with Sarah. She was empty. She was barren. She had even acted unwisely a decade or so earlier by using the flesh to try to bring about a spiritual promise. But God said that Sarah was His chosen princess through whom He was going to establish His covenant with Abraham.
God had said it, yet judging from Abraham’s response to God’s revelation, Abraham hadn’t believed it. We just read that “Abraham fell on his face and laughed.” To make it even worse, Abraham mocked God in his heart by asking, “Will a child be born to a man one hundred years old? And will Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?”
God had just told Abraham that Sarah was going to have a baby, and all Abraham could do was break out into hysterical laughter. “Good one, God,” Abraham joked. “I’m ninety-nine, and Sarah is ninety. We couldn’t get the shop working twenty-five years ago when You first told us the news, and You think that all of a sudden we’re just going to get this thing rolling? Right, God. I think You meant to say my son Ishmael.”
However, God knew exactly what He had meant to say because He corrected Abraham in the very next verse: “No, but Sarah your wife will bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; and I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him” (Genesis 17:19).
Later, when God gave more specific details about the promised birth of Abraham’s child by Sarah, Sarah overheard the conversation. Her response was no different from her husband’s.
And Sarah was listening at the tent door, which was behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; Sarah was past childbearing. Sarah laughed to herself, saying “After I have become old, shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?” And the LORD said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, saying ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, when I am so old?’ Is anything too difficult for the LORD?” (Genesis 18:10-14).
Abraham laughed. Sarah laughed. Abraham and Sarah seem to be the laughing couple. Neither of them believed God could do what He said He was going to do. In fact, Sarah went so far as to say that she wasn’t the only problem—Abraham couldn’t even get that far. Super Viagra couldn’t help this man out. Sarah said, “After I have become old, shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?” Sarah laughed at the very thought of becoming pregnant by Abraham.
Notice that Sarah “laughed to herself.” I imagine this is similar to what we do as well. We boldly say our “amens” in church and speak with words of faith, but inside we’re laughing just like Abraham and Sarah. We’re questioning God. But whether we laugh out loud or quietly doesn’t matter to God. He hears us clearly either way.
“Why did you laugh?” God asked.
“I didn’t laugh,” Sarah replied.
“Oh, yes you did,” God corrected her. “I heard you.”
Sarah had laughed because she didn’t think God understood the facts. The facts were that she was old, Abraham was old, and nothing could change that. Those were the facts. But the facts and the promise don’t always line up. In fact, rarely do the facts and the promise ever line up. Instead, the facts often challenge our faith that God will fulfill His promise. They are real, right in our face, and relevant. There is no denying the facts. However, the question to ask when you are faced with your own Sarah-like situation is this: Are you going to believe the facts, or are you going to believe the promise?
Don’t misunderstand the question. I’m not asking if you are going to believe that the facts are true. The facts are true, just as they were true with Sarah. Sarah hadn’t had a baby. She was past childbearing age—by a long shot. Abraham no longer gave her any pleasure, if you know what I mean. Women don’t get pregnant at the age of 90. Men don’t get women pregnant at the age of 100. Those are the facts, and they are true.
But when it comes to God’s Word and His promises, the facts alone don’t tell the whole story—unless you let them. Don’t let yourself get too caught up in the facts. God is trying to get you to embrace the promise.
Much of the time, if not most of the time, God delays the fulfillment of His promise until you’re no longer tied to the facts. Just as Israel took 40 years to cover ground that should have taken them 35 days, you can wander in a circle of unbelief until you’re ready to trust God.
Often we get frustrated with God because we feel as if He’s delaying coming through for us in a situation. Yet when we find ourselves in a situation like that, we need to ask whether God might be delaying because we’re too hung up on the facts.
The facts are the facts. I’m not saying that you should dismiss the facts or deny them. Just never let the facts override the promise because God is greater than the facts.
Facts alone will lock you into a natural frame of mind, but faith alone will move you into a supernatural one. God’s ways are not our ways, but He will let us delay our destiny if we’re too focused on doing things our way simply because we can’t imagine any other way.
God’s Power Revealed
Although Abraham and Sarah laughed when God told them what He would do through them, they had been introduced to a greater level of God’s power this second time around. Twenty-five years had passed since God first made His promise known, and two major events had taken place. In these two events, God revealed to Abraham and Sarah just how powerful He is.
The first event took place in Sodom and Gomorrah. When God destroyed the two major powerhouse cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, He showed Abraham and Sarah that nothing is too difficult for Him.
We read about the second event in Genesis 20. Abraham and Sarah traveled “toward the land of the Negev, and settled between Kadesh and Shur” (verse 1). While there, Abraham and Sarah journeyed to Gerar, where the King of Gerar, Abimelech, took a liking to Sarah. Advanced in years, Sarah was still apparently turning heads. Fearing for his own life if the king should find out he was Sarah’s husband, Abraham had lied and told him Sarah was his sister. Sarah was Abraham’s half-sister, so he told a half-lie—which is pretty much the same as drinking a cup of water that is half-poisoned. It was still a lie.
However, when Abimelech took Sarah into his harem, he went to sleep and had a dream. In his dream, God told him that Sarah was married to Abraham and that he needed to return her to him or he was going to be a dead man. Abimelech immediately returned Sarah to Abraham, but not before having experienced repercussions from his decision to take her in the first place.
Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech and his wife and his maids, so that they bore children. For the LORD had closed fast all the wombs of the household of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham’s wife (verses 17-18).
Keep Sarah’s problem in mind as you think about that passage. Sarah was barren. Her womb had been closed, making it impossible for her to have children. In Gerar, God showed her that He could not only close the womb of every woman in Abimelech’s household but also open it back up again. God was demonstrating to Sarah that nothing was impossible for Him.
These two very significant events happened during the 25 years between God’s promise that He was going to make Abraham and Sarah into a great nation and the announcement that He was about to fulfill that promise. God showed His power to nurture Abraham and Sarah’s faith so it could germinate and grow. He did this because if they didn’t believe, He would not bring about the miracle He had promised. As I mentioned when we looked at Rahab’s story, faith is God’s love language. The writer of Hebrews tells us plainly, “Without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6).
Faith is so critical to God that He will intentionally take you through various scenarios and difficulties in order to build your faith. Not only that, He will wait as long as it takes for that faith to bring forth life. God will allow you to remain barren, lifeless, and empty until faith rises from the ashes of doubt. Only then will you experience the abundant life—the spiritual pregnancy that God wants to give you in the midst of your barren and empty situation.
We read in Genesis 21:1, “Then the LORD took note of Sarah as He had said, and the LORD did for Sarah as He had promised.” When studying passages in the Bible, I always point out the word then. Anytime you see the word then, you need to ask yourself, when? Looking back at the previous verses, we discover that God opened up Sarah’s womb after He had shut and then reopened the wombs in Abimelech’s household. God revealed to Sarah His power to control whose wombs are open and whose wombs are closed. Then Sarah “conceived and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the appointed time of which God had spoken to him” (verse 2).
Sarah had a baby. By Abraham. This undoubtedly produced a spin-off from The Real Housewives of Canaan and Desperate Housewives. The brand-new show might have been called Sarah and Abe Plus One.
I have a feeling that the new show might have been a comedy of sorts because shortly after Sarah had given birth, she named her son Isaac and said, “God has made laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me” (verse 6). This is one laughing family. Sarah said what she did because Isaac’s name literally means “he laughs.”
God told Abraham he was going to have a son, and Abraham laughed. Sarah overheard God saying she was going to have a son, and Sarah laughed. Isaac’s name would now serve as a continual reminder for everyone that nothing is impossible with God—and that God Himself must have a pretty healthy sense of humor too.
Sarah had doubted God’s promise. Initially, she had tried using a human solution to solve a heavenly dilemma. Later, she simply lacked the faith to believe that what God had said was actually true. Only after Sarah witnessed God’s mighty hand while she was in a foreign land did her faith prompt her to cooperate with the promise. Keep in mind that Sarah didn’t get pregnant without responding to a step of faith first.
The principle of faith that applied to Sarah applies to you and me as well. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, His promises to you are yours by faith. Don’t be limited to the facts. Don’t be limited to what you can see. We read more about this in Romans 4:16-17:
For this reason it is by faith, in order that it may be in accordance with grace, so that the promise will be guaranteed to all the descendants, not only to those who are of the Law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, (as it is written, “A father of many nations have I made you”) in the presence of Him whom he believed, even God, who gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist.
God is so good at being God that He doesn’t even need raw materials to work with. God can call into being “that which does not exist.” He can take dead things and give them life. He can miraculously intervene and cause a dead womb to house new life. He can give a dead future new life. Or a dead career, a dead dream, or a dead heart. God is a master at bringing life from what appears to have died. When God brings into being that which does not exist, we call that ex nihilo. That simply means that God creates something out of nothing.
If you have a dead hope, a dead relationship, or even a dead dream, God has a way of making life come out of something that doesn’t even exist. Don’t look at what you can see. Don’t just look at the facts.
Maybe you have been single for a long time, and you have given up believing that your future spouse is out there somewhere. Remember that God doesn’t need raw materials to work with. You don’t need to invent a way to meet a man or meet a woman, such as going to a club or hanging out somewhere that might not be the best place for you. God is so good at what He does, if you will simply trust Him in faith and stop looking to human solutions to solve a spiritual issue, God can bring your future spouse directly to you. He can create families, careers, futures, and good health even when He didn’t seem to have anything at all to work with. Trust Him.
In fact, do more than trust Him. Do what Abraham did. In Romans 4:18, we read, “In hope against hope he believed, so that he might become a father of many nations.”
Doesn’t that sound like a conundrum of sorts? Abraham hoped against hope. It was a hope set against all odds. That means he hoped when there was no hope to be had. Abraham believed when there was no belief to be found. I don’t want you to read that too quickly and miss the significance of this verse. In a hopeless situation, Abraham hoped. Paul wants us to clearly understand that Abraham faced more than just a difficult situation with Sarah. Paul wants us to know beyond the shadow of a doubt that Abraham hoped against all hope.
And because of that hope, Abraham took a step of faith.
Without becoming weak in faith he contemplated his own body, now as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah’s womb; yet, with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what God had promised, He was able also to perform (Romans 4:19-21).
To contemplate is to think about something. Without getting into too many personal details, Abraham is laying in his bed at night contemplating the fact that his own body is “as good as dead.” Yet he remembers God’s promise that Sarah is going to bear his son. On one hand, Abraham doesn’t want to be physically intimate with his wife because he thinks, “What’s the use? My body is dead. Sarah’s womb is closed. Go to sleep, Abe. Goodnight.”
But on the other hand, Abraham remembers what God has said. He remembers the power God displayed at Sodom and Gomorrah as well as in his experience with King Abimelech. Those thoughts then make Abraham want to try to be physically intimate.
Abraham thought about his problem.
Then Abraham thought about God’s promise.
He thought again about his problem.
Then he thought again about God’s promise.
And Scripture says that when Abraham gave glory to God in the middle of his problem, he decided to be intimate with his wife. Nine months later, baby Isaac was born.
Abraham’s response should be our own. Never let the problem dictate what you are going to do. Instead, act with a full view of the promise. And nine months later—or however short or long—you can testify to what God has done in and through you.
Against All Hope
Even though Abraham and Sarah lost a number of years when Sarah came up with a human plan to force God’s promise, God ultimately delivered on what He had told them with a special delivery of His own. God might have seemed to be taking a long time, but He was waiting until all of the pieces were in place—waiting until Abraham was able to hope against all hope and Sarah was able to respond in faith—in order to bring about the fruition of His promise.
If God seems to be taking too long to come through for you, I want to encourage you to keep believing. Don’t give up. Don’t throw in the towel. God isn’t working on your timetable, and He is not bound by your facts. Trust Him.
“But Tony,” I can hear you saying, “I’m so old now—even if God does come through, my life is pretty much over at this point, or my family is grown, or I’m forty years old and I’m not married yet…if God comes through now, it’s too late anyhow.”
Friend, it’s never too late. Take courage because Sarah might have had the same thought. After all, she was 90 years old when she had Isaac. Could she expect to see him become a toddler, a teenager, or a young adult? Most of us would assume that she could not. But Genesis 23:1 says that “Sarah lived one hundred and twenty-seven years; these were the years of the life of Sarah.” Sarah is the only woman in the Bible whose age is given at her death. That is something frequently done for men, but no other woman in the Bible has her age of death recorded.
One reason God may have wanted us to know this is to remind us that even though He might seem to be taking a long time to come through with His promise, when He does come through, He’s going to give you enough time to enjoy it. Sarah got to live 37 more years after Isaac was born. That’s a lot of birthday parties and Mother’s Day cards.
The latter part of Sarah’s life reminds me of another biblical character who could have been discouraged that the best years of his life were wasted in wandering—through no fault of his own.
Caleb and Joshua were two of the twelve spies we mentioned in the introduction. These two said that the Israelites should enter the Promised Land as God had told them. However, the remainder of the Israelites voted them down, forcing them to suffer the punishment of those who had lacked faith. For 40 years, Caleb and Joshua wandered in the desert because other people’s unbelief had prevented them from going where God had told them they could go.
However, instead of bemoaning the years he lost and settling in a rocking chair by a fire pit once the Israelites eventually got to enter the Promised Land, Caleb said to Joshua, “Give me that mountain!” He actually had a bit more to say than just that.
“I was forty years old when Moses the servant of the LORD sent me from Kadesh-barnea to spy out the land, and I brought word back to him as it was in my heart. Nevertheless my brethren who went up with me made the heart of the people melt with fear; but I followed the LORD my God fully. So Moses swore on that day, saying, ‘Surely the land on which your foot has trodden will be an inheritance to you and to your children forever, because you have followed the LORD my God fully.’ Now behold, the LORD has let me live, just as He spoke, these forty-five years, from the time that the LORD spoke this word to Moses, when Israel walked in the wilderness; and now behold, I am eighty-five years old today. I am still as strong today as I was in the day Moses sent me; as my strength was then, so my strength is now, for war and for going out and coming in. Now then, give me this hill country about which the LORD spoke on that day, for you heard on that day that Anakim were there, with great fortified cities; perhaps the LORD will be with me, and I will drive them out as the LORD has spoken.”
So Joshua blessed him and gave Hebron to Caleb the son of Jephunneh for an inheritance (Joshua 14:7-13).
Caleb didn’t allow his past to determine his future. Caleb had lost a lot of years in the wilderness though he had done nothing wrong. Maybe something similar has happened to you. Maybe you feel as if decades have gone by, and you haven’t been able to get to the place you believed God told you He was taking you. It could be because of a sin someone committed against you, or a duty you felt obligated to fulfill, or any number of things. However, if anyone had a reason to complain, 85-year-old Caleb did. Yet not even a hint of looking back appears in his words. Rather, Caleb—no doubt slightly bent over by then from age—is ready to take on the titanically oversized Anakim without hesitation or concern.
History goes on to show that Caleb was able to drive the Anakim out of his land. Recorded in Joshua and Judges, Caleb’s victory is clear.
Caleb drove out from there the three sons of Anak: Sheshai and Ahiman and Talmai, the children of Anak (Joshua 15:14).
Then they gave Hebron to Caleb, as Moses had promised; and he drove out from there the three sons of Anak (Judges 1:20).
Caleb didn’t let lost years keep him from gaining what had been promised or from enjoying it. He is like Sarah, who got to enjoy the fulfillment of her promise for many years as well. In fact, Sarah’s comeback was so strong that she ended up in the Hall of Faith. “By faith even Sarah herself received ability to conceive, even beyond the proper time of life, since she considered Him faithful who had promised” (Hebrews 11:11).
Sarah will forever be remembered as a role model for all women.
For in this way in former times the holy women also, who hoped in God, used to adorn themselves, being submissive to their own husbands; just as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord, and you have become her children if you do what is right without being frightened by any fear (1 Peter 3:5-6).
God used Sarah’s faith and obedience to turn what seemed like a hopeless situation and a devastating mistake into a legacy to be cherished. If God did it with Sarah, He can do it with you.
Regardless of the reason why you may not have experienced the fulfillment of God’s promise to you—even if someone else’s unbelief or sin interfered with your life—your past doesn’t have to dictate what God has for you now and the time He will give you to enjoy His blessing in the future.
It’s okay to recognize the facts of your situation. And those facts might not look all that good. But don’t miss the promise you have of a future and a hope.
Don’t miss that.
Never limit God through unbelief. Give Him the opportunity to amaze you. Let Him surprise you. Let God make you say, “Wow! Who knew He had it in Him to pull that off for me!”
God does have it in Him. I know He does. I’ve seen Him do it in the lives of the people we’ve studied throughout these pages. You have seen it too. But more than that, I have seen Him do it in my own life as well. And I am still believing that He will do more. At the time of this writing, I am 63 years old—just as strong now as I have ever been. I want that mountain God has told me about.
I want you to have your mountain too.
Trust Him for it. Trust Him to guide you on the path He has for your life. If you will trust Him, responding in faith and obedience to His Word, He won’t let you down. Those who hope in God will never be disappointed (Isaiah 49:23).
I promise.
Better yet, He promises. It’s never too late to take Him at His Word.