COME AS A CHILD - LESSON 55 - THE FAITHFUL HEART OF SARAH

(Written by Sheila Gail Landgraf)

And so we come to the point in Sarah’s life right before she discovers she is 
pregnant with Isaac.
  

Sarah has been through so much already!  

I wondered - what would have been the state of her heart?

Abraham had taken her as a wife when she was very young.  She was said to be the most beautiful woman on earth at that time.  It is doubtful she had ever known or even dated any man other than her husband.  All she knew of life she had willingly and enthusiastically learned at Abraham’s side.  He had been her shelter, her strong tower, her knight in shinning armor.     She must have adored him in every way.  

In the land of her birth she was the envy of all the women.  Living there, she had it all; the gift of great beauty, the gift of the right husband, the gift of wealth and unending material possessions, a nice home, and a large close extended family.  What more could a woman ask for?

  

One day Abraham came home and said God had told him to leave and go to a place that He would show him.  Everything changed in an instant for Sarah.  She had to follow her husband to a strange and unknown land and give up what every woman secretly desires the most – security.

Did this bother Sarah?  Not at all!  This young woman who had never spent one minute worrying about food, clothing, shelter or safety gathered up her things and said "Let's go!"  

It seems that from the very beginning of her life Sarah had been given the gift of divine insight from God.  She knew in her heart that she was going with her husband on a divine mission of God.  God had made this clear to her, though she probably did not know exactly why and perhaps she never understood all the little details; especially when she considered the fact that she had remained childless for so long. 

So it was that Sarah just smiled and left with Abraham on the back of a camel loaded down with only her most needed possessions.  She rode happily off into the sunset to learn how to live in a tent instead of a house.

Do you think it is an easy thing to learn to live in a tent instead of a house?  Sarah did.  She left behind all those material things that burdened down her time; all of those things that owned her instead of letting her own them.  She now had more time for God and more time for others.  Living in a tent is something all Christians should desire.  You have nothing real to lose and everything valuable to gain! 

 Sarah also quickly learned how to exist without the company of other women, for she was often alone and probably spent hours and hours with no one else to speak to, except for Abraham when he came home tired and grouchy from tending his flocks and dealing with his servants.  

Being alone isn’t always a bad thing either, especially if you know God, as Sarah did.  That is because if you know God you are never really alone.  Sarah allowed God to use the circumstances He put her in to teach her about life.  She spent hours meditating, studying, listening and praying.  All Christians should desire this peaceful growing state in life.  It is really quite necessary in order to be able to grow and move ahead in the journey toward God's kingdom.  Our quiet times tend to eventually make us stronger people.

Up to this point in her life, Sarah seems to have been one extremely happy young woman.  She and Abraham had become very busy teaching all the many people passing through the land how to know, worship and live for The One True God.  They taught at their table, always ending their lessons with bread, wine and fellowship  

Word of mouth quickly spread throughout the land from the people they meet.   They suddenly were blessed with a steady stream of people coming and going.  Their tents were filled with those who wanted to learn more of God’s way of life.  They fed them both physically and spiritually.  No one ever left  unfed.  God kept bringing these people to them, it was part of their mission, part of their destiny.  They were so happy in the midst of this!  Sarah had eyes to SEE God at work in their lives.  She was very, very happy with this life in a tent.  She felt blessed in every way.

 Abraham taught the men and Sarah taught the women.   Sarah’s tent was constantly full of worship.  Her tent actually was the shadow of our pattern of worship today.  Her tent provided the pattern for the wilderness tabernacle that was later used by Moses.  God gave the instructions to Moses, but many things resembled what we know of Sarah’s tent.  

Sarah lit candles on Friday nights to welcome the Sabbath and the candles on the westernmost side of her tent never went out.  The light from these candles was used to bring the fire for the rest of the candles all through the week.  Her tent was filled with constant, never-ceasing unending light.  

A second miracle occurred with Sarah's bread dough.  It never grew stale or moldy and there was always enough to feed everyone that Abraham invited inside.  This resembled what the Israelites experienced in the wilderness with the Manna From Heaven.  This resembles what we now experience spiritually today when we partake of The Lord's Supper or take The Holy Eucharist.

A third miracle was the Cloud of Glory that rested over her tent.   God’s Presence could actually be seen with the eyes in the form of the cloud over Sarah’s tent. This cloud was the precursor of the Cloud of Smoke and Pillar of Fire that led the Children of Israel through the wilderness.  These things are symbolic of God's Holy Spirit that was later sent to The Church after Christ arose from the grave.

All of these things that are so familiar to Christian worshipers today started and were brought about by the first shadows of Sarah's tent and Sarah's heart for God.

When Sarah died all of these things went away.  They did not reappear again until Isaac brought Rebekah to live in Sarah's tent.   

These miracles were simply an outward expression of the spirit of Sarah's heart toward God.  She constantly worshiped with every action she took.  She brought God’s light, His Presence and understanding and warmth into their home and into every other place that she went.  The love of God shone from her countenance.    

In those days, people coming to see Sarah in her tent were encouraged and enlightened.  The fresh bread she served her guest symbolized her servant’s heart.  Sarah listened to God constantly and sought His will for managing her home.  There was good hard work and good peaceful rest in the home of Sarah.  God has used the story of her tent to teach us how a home should always be.  God has used the story of Sarah’s tent to paint a portrait of how His true Church should always be.

But even Sarah had her trials and tests.
  

There came the day when Sarah also had to leave this much loved home.  Once again she had to make a long uncertain journey with Abraham, this time they journeyed to Egypt.  In Egypt Sarah and Abraham would be out of the element of life that God had shown them.  Their ways and customs would seem strange to these people living in a pagan land.  It was much easier to eat and have plenty in Egypt, but it was a land spiritually starved for the knowledge of God.    Sarah and Abraham left one type of famine to go to another type of famine.  It was a land of idol worship and spiritual deceptions.  God did not send them this time, they went on Abraham's own human logic.    

This was the beginning of a whole different dimension of Sarah's life.  We have already studied the story of how Abraham asked her to say she was his sister.  This must have been a very hard time for Sarah, but she was filled up with God’s Holy Spirit because of all of the worship from inside her tent for so many years, and so she was not afraid of the circumstances she found herself living through.  Faith exercised daily with prayer and study makes us braver.   It gives us courage and inner strength and we are able to overcome.  Sarah, though she probably did not agree with him, was obedient to Abraham.  She stayed obedient even though he made some very foolish choices concerning her.  

Abraham basically deserted her and lived like a king in the luxury that was provided for him because of the fact that the King was interested in his “sister.”

Sarah must have been furious with Abraham, but at the same time she must have remembered that God HAD sent them off on a mission together.  Perhaps she was often confused, but Sarah trusted God through all of this.  When the time came that she had to face the lusts of a pagan king, God protected her.  

The obedient Sarah with the servant’s heart did the right thing by trusting God and asking for His intervention and they escaped this dangerous situation unharmed and even better off materially than they had been before.

As for their marriage though, I’m not at all sure that they were better off.  

Sarah must have allowed reality to hit her heart a bit, and she must have noticed that Abraham had not come to her defense and that he had been perfectly willing for another man to have her in order to protect himself.   She was given plenty of time in Pharaoh's harem to ponder this.  This knight's shinning armor was becoming a bit tarnished to the lady.  This cowardly action of Abraham did something to Sarah’s heart that Abraham could not fix.  It changed her perception of who he was.   Most women in such a situation would become bitter and hard-hearted and feel that the one they loved with all of their heart had totally abandoned and betrayed them.  Sarah let some of this self pity creep inside her heart too.  Then; because of the bad feelings which dwelling on all of this caused for Sarah, she began to doubt Abraham’s love for her.  The trust factor in their relationship had been completely destroyed.   It was a strange place for Sarah to find herself.  This surely was not the mission God had destined for her life!  Where had she gone wrong?

Sarah got very distracted, spending entirely too much time with worrying about her own problems and she forgot to pay attention to God’s plan.  

She reasoned that she didn’t feel the same toward Abraham anymore, but she did desire to have back some of the security she had given up for him.  She felt cheated, and as if she had been dealt with unfairly by him.   She wanted to emphasize the legal side of their marriage in order to protect herself from further harm.   In her human search to find back the security she had given up for him, Sarah started to devise a way to make Abraham the father he had always wanted to be.  She thought a child would help their relationship.  She knew the only fault that could be laid at her feet was the fact that she had not been able to give Abraham the child he so longed for.  She knew she was now getting older, and would soon be past the age of bearing a child.

It is possible that she had given up on God fulfilling this promise, or either she felt pressured to do what she could to make God’s will come about in her own way.  

We humans should never play God! It is very dangerous, and it never ends well. 

Sarah decided to use her servant Hagar to make this much wanted child of Abraham happen.  It was a grave mistake!  

For the first time in all of her history, we hear of Sarah’s sin – not so much that she gave her husband another woman (this was not right either) but absolutely that she devised her own plan instead of listening to God to know HIS plan for her life.  

This is where most of us miss the train to glory.  Sarah was no different at this point in her life than any other ordinary woman who had ever lived on planet earth.  She didn't think or pray.  She acted out of her will instead of God's.  
  

The results were exactly what you would expect.  

Hagar became pregnant with Abraham’s child and he began to lavish his attention on Hagar and the child instead of Sarah.    Sarah had already suffered from lack of self esteem due to the incident in Egypt.  Now she suffered from neglect and jealousy too.  These are a horrible combination of emotions. They would never have entered Sarah’s life if she had not chosen her own way instead of God’s way.  These dangerous emotions can make the most beautiful of women do the most horrible things; and they are not ever pretty to behold.  If you want to see beauty turn to ashes just watch a beautiful woman become neglected and jealous.  It is a very ugly picture!
 

 The bitterness became so bad that Sarah resorted more and more to isolation.  For the first time ever in her life she knew what it was like to feel lonely.  Her relationship with Abraham became almost non-existent.  They passed each other in the camp.  Sometimes they had meals together, but there were no words passing between them.  Abraham slept in Hagar’s tent.  Sarah cried alone in the dark.

The team work that they had enjoyed in the days of their past of spreading God’s word became less and less, and Abraham was tuned in more and more to Hagar’s thoughts and ideas about religion and life.  He used the excuse that he was studying the best ways for how to raise his only son.  

Sarah was very, very miserable.  She detested Hagar’s wild ideas and knew they were totally wrong.  She watched the boy being spoiled rotten and it was all totally out of her hands without Abraham’s backing. 

The other women living in the camp with them, the servants and extended family members probably made fun of Sarah.  At the least they pitied her for being childless and not being able to keep her husband satisfied.  Sarah probably had spells of anger that gave way to long bouts of depression, and she was probably on the verge of hate when somehow, some way, (we are not told exactly when or how)  something happened; she found God again and began to release all of her hurt emotions to Him.

 As she prayed and gave up her heart’s tiny little pieces one by one, God ministered to His beloved Sarah.  He did not desert her.  He began the work of healing her broken heart. This took a long time, but God was there when she decided to reach for Him.  She soon discovered that He had never left her side.  She was the one who had moved, and she was the one who decided to move back.  God had been right there all along.  
  

It was in this time of struggle, through the 13 years of Ishmael’s childhood, that Sarah learned the astounding fact that her true husband was God.  God is the true husband of every soul that covenants with Him.  The covenant of God is above all human covenants.  When we put God's covenant first, all other covenants of the human nature fall into their proper place.  The love of God was far greater toward Sarah than the love of Abraham, but God was still there for both Sarah and Abraham.  If each of them followed their covenant with God together at the same time, the human covenant of their marriage flourished.   Anything that happened between them was designed to flow from God's covenant above them.  This is the secret that so many women never come to understand.  Those who do come to understand, usually find it from hardship, just as Sarah did.  

She began to pray to God again.  She began to worship and adore Him.  She woke up to the fact that Abraham would never be a perfect man and she accepted the fact that he would never be capable of loving her as God did.  She leaned on God and trusted Him to help her with Abraham.  That was when things took a turn and began to change.

 One day Sarah woke up to Abrahm standing in her tent with the look of love on his face again.  He had just experienced another milestone in his own relationship with God.  He was full of talk and excited to share this with her.  He had just received another covenant agreement from Heaven.  It had not happened until he had taken a close examination of who he had become and how far away from God he had walked.  He had finally realized his mistake in allowing Hagar to take over their lives.  Abraham had been brought back by God and he was headed back to his original God ordained purpose in life.  He had confessed his sins to God, and now he confessed them to Sarah.   

He had opened his eyes to the way he had treated his wife and he knew without a doubt that she was the one God had intended for him to love forever.  This had been confirmed by God a million times over.  Abraham had even committed to performing a physical sign which would proclaim that he would no longer be listening or living out anything other than God's will for his life.  He had been circumcised and had his whole household circumcised also.   

Sarah gave thanks to God for the change in her earthly husband.  She knew God was the reason for this.  She had been praying and praying, constantly interceding on Abraham’s behalf.  God had answered her prayers in more ways than she could ever realize.
 

 Shortly after this, as Abraham was sitting in front of their tent one day, they were visited by three heavenly visitors who told them that Sarah would soon be blessed with the promised child.  They both laughed.  They knew they were too old now to have a child.  Still, they hoped!  Hope has a way of making miracles happen.  Why would divine messengers not tell them the truth?  Abraham and Sarah believed again in miracles.  They opened up their heart to every possibility of anything that God wanted from them.  

Once again Sarah and Abraham shared the hope of the promises of God.  Once again, Sarah had hopes for her relationship with Abraham to flourish and grow.  Sarah forgave him and they begin to renew their relationship together, a little more each day.  

  It still wasn’t easy.  Abraham still had blind spots, but Sarah never again forgot that God was her true husband.  More tests would come.  Whenever she was disappointed in the human side of Abraham, she turned to the Divine God who led her through each and every situation.  Nothing that Abraham could do from this point forward would ever hurt her again.   No love could equal the love she had begun to receive from God.  It had always been there, right from the beginning, but she had now learned how to reach out and receive it.  She only looked at what God showed her and she only did what God told her.  

Sarah had discovered a wonderful sense of freedom in this and it made her sometimes happier than those days of her youth.  Life from this point on became a lot less complicated, a lot less stressful and a lot more simple.

However; like every thing that seems to have a happy ending, this new found joy merely brought Abraham and Sarah to another test.

 Another famine happened in the land, and this time Abraham took them to the land of the Philistines.  

Almost as if his memory of the past had been erased, Abraham once again asked Sarah to call him her brother.  

Sarah must have been really crushed this time, but she leaned on God instead of falling apart.  She had learned to be strong and to do the right thing no matter what or who came her way.  Her faith never wavered.  When she was again abducted and placed in the king’s harem she prayed like she had never prayed before.

 
God revealed Himself in a dream to this pagan king and kept her safe from harm.  Her true husband came through for her.

  

God did not let Abraham off totally.  Abraham had to pray for this king that had wanted to take his wife.  Sarah must have enjoyed that part of the situation.  Little did she know how the healing prayers of her husband would affect her future also.  Sarah's own infertility was healed as she stood in the prayer for the pagan king and his household.  The one who had always had eyes to see did not even realize what was going on - but God knew what He was doing.
 

It was probably a LONG ride home that day.

They didn’t actually go back to The Groves of Mamre, but settled in the land that had been granted to them by King Abimelech.  They settled down in the new place with all the gold the pagan king had given them and Abraham, at the request of the king, bought Sarah a beautiful new veil.

Sarah began to live like a hidden, almost forgotten treasure.  Somehow she felt happy and content just to be in her tent and to be spending more time with Abraham.  When she went out, she wore the veil.  She liked the security it gave to her; a security she had not found with her earthly husband, a security she had missed when she had first left on their long journey so many years ago.  God had given it back to her,  just in a different form than she had expected.

 Suddenly she felt young and full of life again, even at this point in her lateness of years.  Though she was actually much older now, for the first time ever, Sarah felt more young at heart.  It was in this content place of life, wrapped inside the veil of security she wore with a new found sense of contentment and sureness of God's love that Sarah  finally discovered she was going to have the long promised child of The Covenant.  

Suddenly she realized that all of the time leading up to this moment had  simply been preparation for becoming the mother of Isaac.  Her mission and destiny in life was about to happen.  God had taught her well and she was now ready. 

To be expecting Isaac was yet another sweet miracle that God had granted to Sarah.  Her joy was unending and she sang songs of praise in her tent again!  

She lit the candles and she baked the bread again!  

All the land heard how Her husband had blessed her and her joy was full.

So what was the state of Sarah's heart just before the conception of Isaac?

Well...... there she sat, right in the middle of her tent. thanking God unconditionally as she lived through the scenes in the middle of her story.  She lifted her praise and thanks to the heavens, not even knowing what would come at the end of her story.   It would have been enough for Sarah now, just to know God's unending love, just to feel His Presence hovering over her tent again.

Now that is what I call great faith;  To be content to not know the end of the story until God chose to reveal it.   

Sarah and Abraham were never happier than this very moment in history, except of course, when they laughed together at the moment of Isaac’s birth.  

It was a great miracle and they were so very, very blessed!