Pump It Up! Live Elated, Not Deflated Through Disappointing DaysSample

Sticking your oar in?

'Sticking your oar in' is a phrase that describes a person interfering, interrupting, or involving themselves in an activity when it's unnecessary and unhelpful to do so.

Abraham was a great man of God, but he had some epic ‘sticking his oar in’ fails. God has promised him and Sarah a son, but as time went on and this dream hadn’t yet been fulfilled, Sarah urged him to sleep with her servant Hagar, and as a result of this, Ishmael was born. This caused division in their family and pain for all involved. Instead of waiting on God’s timing, Abraham and Sarah took matters into their own hands.

Abraham, like all of us, was a mixed bag of triumphs and failures. Today’s scripture from Romans 4 relates to Abraham and is one of my favourite passages from the Bible. It says, “Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations.” This encourages me so much. With each dinghy day that passed with no new job on the horizon, the hope inside me could’ve died a little if I let it. Or I could stand with good old Abraham and, against all hope, in hope, choose to believe.

Even when things appear to get worse and situations look much less likely to change, we can have a heavenly hope that doesn’t depend at all on what’s happening around us. We can wait with hope, because our hope is in something firm - our amazing, unfailing God. This heavenly hope is ‘an anchor for the soul.’ (Hebrews 6:19).

Even when it feels like God has forgotten his promises to us or he’s stalling, or busy with other things, this is simply not true. When we feel we are aimlessly bobbing in our dinghy and this might go on for eternity, we literally have to dig in and develop the grit and determination to keep on waiting and keep trusting in his perfect timing. We have to come to a place of submission to his timetable. To develop a commitment to learning all that we can and using this in between seasons as a deep preparation time. We must ensure that we are ready to receive the dream and work on the character issues that God is bringing to our attention. And we must resist the temptation to ‘stick our oar in’!

Reflection

In what ways are you tempted to ‘stick your oar in’ to help God along?!

Instead, decide that in ’oar’ll’ your ways you’ll acknowledge him and he will direct your paths :) (Proverbs 3: 5-6)