HEAR IT FOR YOURSELF!
Genesis 18:9-10 And they said unto him, Where is Sarah your wife? And he said, Behold, in the tent. And He said, I will certainly return unto thee according to the time of life; and lo, Sarah your wife shall have a son. And Sarah heard it in the tent door, which was behind Him.
The Lord came to have a meeting with Abraham. The meeting was about Sodom and Gomorrah. The Lord said He wasn’t going to hide from Abraham the thing He was about to do. Before the meeting, there was a meal, and the Lord came and stood in front of the tent that Sarah was in and said to Abraham that Sarah was going to have a son. At first, Sarah didn’t believe it; she laughed (not a Holy Ghost laugh, but a laugh of, “Yeah, right”). She even said within herself, “I’m old and, really, we don’t even do that anymore (meaning that which is necessary to make a child). Then God called her on it, which means God hears even the internal self-talk we do. Then, besides laughing, she lied to God.
Let’s back up. When God first came to Abraham and made a covenant with him, the first thing they established was that God would give him an heir, since he didn’t have a blood heir. Abraham had heard from God and believed what God had said to him. That is how faith comes; it comes by hearing a Word from the Lord. Abraham went home and told Sarah, which was then followed by a lot of disappointment month after month when there was no child. If you have never endured the month after month checking to see if you are with child, it is excruciatingly painful. Sarah finally gave up and told Abraham to be with Hagar, and Ishmael was conceived. That mess was both of their faults, and it caused, and still continues to cause many problems. God came back to Abraham later and told him that Ishmael was not the heir, but that Sarah would conceive his heir. I’m sure, once again, Abraham told Sarah what God had said, and although she did her best to believe, still, there was no child. Then came the meeting mentioned in the beginning of this Daily Bread, the Sodom and Gomorrah meeting. When the Lord walked by the tent that Sarah was in, the Lord was on a mission to speak to Sarah. I know that because He asked, “Where is Sarah?” I’m sure He already knew where she was, just like He knew where Adam was when He called out to him in the Garden of Eden. He calls out or wants to know where we are so we will respond to Him.
The Lord then made His proclamation in front of Sarah’s tent so she could hear. Sarah now had a personal Rhema Word from the Lord. At first, she chose not to believe it, but somewhere, in the first three months, she decided to believe God because Hebrews 11:11 says, “Through faith also Sarah herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged Him faithful who had promised.” Sarah heard the promise and then, she must have meditated on what God had said.
All those years ago when God spoke to Abraham personally, Abraham believed, but it seems that Sarah did not. She needed to hear it from God directly so that’s exactly what God did. He made a special trip by the tent where she was and said what would be (faith begins where the will of God is known). This time, as she thought on it, she believed God and received strength to do something she had never been able to do, conceive and carry a child. The lesson here is that we all need to hear from God. Take God at His written Word; but then, let the logos, the written Word, become revelation, a Rhema Word to you. A spoken Word is essential to our faith. How do you get a Rhema? You listen to messages, read and study the written Word, pray, praise, and worship God. All these things put you in position to hear from God. Sarah heard from God, and so can we.