Bible Studies for Life Sunday School Commentary - Week of April 20, 2008
Exploring Perseverance Genesis 26:1-22
Ah, life’s challenges. How boring our lives would be without them! However, maybe you think, as I sometimes do, that life would be a bit better without so many of them. The challenges our family are facing are many and varied. I received an e-mail just today from a good friend undergoing a biopsy, fearing cancer. More friends just endured a serious bout with meningitis, and now the departure of a family member to Iraq. Someone once defined perseverance as “hanging tough until the end”. How can we hang tough through adverse circumstances and opposition?
Ah, life’s challenges. How boring our lives would be without them! However, maybe you think, as I sometimes do, that life would be a bit better without so many of them. The challenges our family are facing are many and varied. I received an e-mail just today from a good friend undergoing a biopsy, fearing cancer. More friends just endured a serious bout with meningitis, and now the departure of a family member to Iraq. Someone once defined perseverance as “hanging tough until the end”. How can we hang tough through adverse circumstances and opposition?
In our Bible story this week, Isaac found himself in trying circumstances. A famine descended on the land, such as the one during his father Abraham’s time (see Genesis 12). Like many of us, Isaac sought to use his head and secure help for his family. He went to the Philistine king Abimelech, probably to seek safe passage through his land to Egypt. The fertile Nile River delta guaranteed that there would be food in Egypt. Isaac was following in the footsteps of his father Abraham here; Abraham had done the same thing when famine struck, and the results were disastrous and far-reaching. While in Egypt, he lied about Sarah being his wife, he acquired the Egyptian handmaiden Hagar as his wife, Ishmael was born, and the turmoil still rages today. Ishmael is the father of Arabs and what has become the Muslim world. They are bitterly opposed to the Jews, Abraham’s offspring through Isaac, the son of promise. Our world is rocked by terrorism and fear because of one man “using his head”, his own judgment, and not seeking God.
How do you react when experiencing conflict? Fight? Run? Panic? We sometimes have difficulty accepting the fact that God’s will for us will include trials. God clearly spoke to Isaac and revealed His will. Stay in the land promised to his father Abraham. God allows trying circumstances into our lives for various purposes including our own spiritual growth and His glory. God wanted to show the surrounding people how He would care for His own. He would supply Isaac’s needs if Isaac was obedient. To his credit, Isaac listened to God and obeyed. Are you suffering a time of crisis? What is God saying to you?
God did bless Isaac’s obedience; and even that brought him trouble. As God blessed the Philistines in the land became envious of his prosperity. Those who do not understand God’s working and blessings can become jealous and spiteful. Isaac experienced turmoil in the land (where God had told him to stay) because of God’s blessing. In a society that does not even acknowledge God, we can be sure to experience problems when God is at work in our lives. But it is in this world we are called to live, serve, and witness. Our light is intended to penetrate their darkness. However, creatures who live in perpetual darkness do not like the light. It hurts. They run from it, not knowing the benefits of it. It is the same with a lost world that seeks to shun or cut off God’s light. As we obey God and experience His blessing and provision, it will often create difficulty for us in this world.
Isaac showed great faith and maturity in handling this tense situation. He did not fight with the inhabitants of the land, or ask God to curse them. The land was large and there was plenty of room. He continued to trust God and stay in the land, but moved away from the conflict. And he continued to move until the conflict ceased. Genesis 26:22 sums up his strategy: “…the Lord has made room for us, and we will be fruitful in the land.”
How do we know when to fight for what is ours and when to move on? Sometimes God's people do better not to demand their rights and to leave the results to God. Rather than fight, Isaac moved on and started over. He persevered through every challenge though he had legitimate claims to the wells he dug. Being God's people, we should seek peaceful and generous solutions to problems, even if it means bearing the weight of those solutions ourselves. The appropriate response to opposition sometimes is to simply move on and leave the problem, even if you did nothing wrong. Christians can understand that perseverance is not necessarily continuing to do the same thing in the same way at the same place with the same people. Rather, perseverance is continuing to pursue the same God and the same God-given goals in spite of opposition. Let God be your guide in every situation.
How do you react when experiencing conflict? Fight? Run? Panic? We sometimes have difficulty accepting the fact that God’s will for us will include trials. God clearly spoke to Isaac and revealed His will. Stay in the land promised to his father Abraham. God allows trying circumstances into our lives for various purposes including our own spiritual growth and His glory. God wanted to show the surrounding people how He would care for His own. He would supply Isaac’s needs if Isaac was obedient. To his credit, Isaac listened to God and obeyed. Are you suffering a time of crisis? What is God saying to you?
God did bless Isaac’s obedience; and even that brought him trouble. As God blessed the Philistines in the land became envious of his prosperity. Those who do not understand God’s working and blessings can become jealous and spiteful. Isaac experienced turmoil in the land (where God had told him to stay) because of God’s blessing. In a society that does not even acknowledge God, we can be sure to experience problems when God is at work in our lives. But it is in this world we are called to live, serve, and witness. Our light is intended to penetrate their darkness. However, creatures who live in perpetual darkness do not like the light. It hurts. They run from it, not knowing the benefits of it. It is the same with a lost world that seeks to shun or cut off God’s light. As we obey God and experience His blessing and provision, it will often create difficulty for us in this world.
Isaac showed great faith and maturity in handling this tense situation. He did not fight with the inhabitants of the land, or ask God to curse them. The land was large and there was plenty of room. He continued to trust God and stay in the land, but moved away from the conflict. And he continued to move until the conflict ceased. Genesis 26:22 sums up his strategy: “…the Lord has made room for us, and we will be fruitful in the land.”
How do we know when to fight for what is ours and when to move on? Sometimes God's people do better not to demand their rights and to leave the results to God. Rather than fight, Isaac moved on and started over. He persevered through every challenge though he had legitimate claims to the wells he dug. Being God's people, we should seek peaceful and generous solutions to problems, even if it means bearing the weight of those solutions ourselves. The appropriate response to opposition sometimes is to simply move on and leave the problem, even if you did nothing wrong. Christians can understand that perseverance is not necessarily continuing to do the same thing in the same way at the same place with the same people. Rather, perseverance is continuing to pursue the same God and the same God-given goals in spite of opposition. Let God be your guide in every situation.
