Genesis 15:13 Then the Lord said to him, “Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there.
I am bad for coming up with an idea of the way I think something should go and then getting fairly bent out of shape if things don’t go that way. If I had been Abram and God had promised me descendants as numerous as the stars, 400 years of exile and slavery would not have been part of my vision of that promise fulfilled.
Genesis 15:14 But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions.
But God tells us in Isaiah 55:8 that “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,…and my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.” And the message over and over again in these first 15 chapters of Genesis (and in the Bible as a whole) is TRUST God, which means trusting Him even when His vision does not match my own.
Genesis 15:15 You, however, will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age.
Precious Savior, I get so locked into the way I think things should be that when they diverge, I get quite bent out of shape. Forgive me. Help me to trust You always, even when life looks nothing like I hoped or imagined. Help me to remember that You love me deeply and have promised me hope and a future. Thank You for Your promises. Amen.
Genesis 15:16 In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.”
Have a blessed day.