Do I Trust God?

I read Genesis 1-16 today and something jumped out at me. Genesis 12 talks about God coming to Abram and telling him to move. Verse 1 says, "The Lord had said to Abram, 'Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you.'"

Go to the land I will show you.

Go to the land I will show you.

Abram was living in a place called Haran with his family and God called him away. This was post Tower of Babel so everyone was supposed to be moving and populating the earth anyway so it's not really too big of a deal that God called Abram to move. The big deal is that he didn't tell him where to go.

God gives Abram this great promise and tells him that he's going to make him into a great nation, that he'll bless him and everyone on earth will be blessed because of him. So Abram, feeling pretty good I would imagine, takes his wife and his nephew (and all their servants and stuff) and heads out to Canaan. Some things happen, Abram moves around a bit more, and then he and Lot decide that they have to separate because this isn't enough natural resources to support both their families. Abram tells Lot to choose a place to live and says that he'll live wherever Lot doesn't choose. Lot makes a decision and that's when God comes to Abram and shows him the land he promised.

God kept his promise to Abram because Abram followed him obediently. God showed Abram where to settle at just the right time.

Abram had been obsessing about providing a heir even though God had already told him (twice) that he was going to have a bunch of offspring (a.k.a. children). But God doesn't chastise Abram for worrying about having a son. It was a real concern and God told him that he was going to give him a butt load of kids. My favorite verse in this passage is Genesis 15:6- "Abram believed the Lord, and he credited to him as righteousness."

Abram believed God.

Now, we all know that he goofed things up a little with the whole Hagar thing (and that was because he listened to someone who obviously didn't believe God's promise) but that hadn't happened yet. He was ready to take God at his word.

How ready am I to take God at his word? He's promised all these great things but when time goes on and I don't really see evidence that he's keeping his promise, do I still trust him? It's human nature to want rewards right away. But it's a characteristic of a child of the King to keep believing those promises even when they don't come to completion right away.