Genesis 12: Abraham, a Fallible, Faithful, Follower of God
Abraham encounters God, leaves his Chaldean homeland and fails a trial in Egypt.
God knows that Abraham will fail a test when he goes to Egypt and tries to deceive the Pharaoh into thinking his wife is his sister. Yet, God blesses him in the end anyway. This is a great comfort to me because I fail every day but, because of Abraham, I can be confident in the love of God in spite of my stupidities, misgivings, errors, vanity, fear and just baby-like selfishness. God is faithful as long as I don’t give up on his faithfulness. I often say, “even if I must go to hell, I will go praising His name.”
There will be consequences of our sin. Often we do not think ahead about the possible results of what our actions may entail. Not only do we hurt ourselves – we may hurt our loved ones and in hurting our enemies we build an environment that is more hostile to our daily lives and our family members as well.
It is a pretty basic formula: we will be tested, we must make choices and there will be consequences. The difference in a worldly/materialistic response is that while they can only choose based on their desires and perceived needs, we as Christians can choose with the help of the Spirit to achieve a Godly response. The world is alone but we are never alone.