Letting go of “My way”

Abraham faced a difficult choice after the birth of Isaac. Sarah caught Ishmael mocking Isaac, and demanded that Abraham send Hagar and Ishmael away.

It seemed pretty harsh. After all, Abraham was still Ishmael’s father, and even in their culture, it was a definite no-no to send them away. It just wasn’t done.

Yet God told Abraham to let them go. Why?

It’s possible that even after Isaac was born, Abraham would have been tempted to give the rights and privileges of the first-born to Ishmael.

It’s not likely that this would have happened, I admit.

However, we already saw earlier in Genesis 17 that he had asked God to give Ishmael that right. And after 14 years or so of being Abraham’s only son, I’m sure Abraham was still very much attached to him.

But God made it clear that this wasn’t his will.

Even more important, though, was what Ishmael symbolized: a life of doing things “my way.”

Ishmael came as a result of Abraham trying to do things his own way.

Abraham and Sarah had wavered in their belief of God’s promises, and when God didn’t fulfill his promise when they expected, they became impatient and tried to make things happen on their own.

But they were wrong. Their way was not God’s way.

And basically God told Abraham, “It’s time to let ‘your way’ go. I’ll take care of Ishmael. He’ll be okay. But it’s time to let go of Ishmael and your own plans, and totally commit yourself to me and my plans.”

And so Abraham obeyed.

God asks the same thing of us. So often we battle between doing things our own way and God’s way.

Sometimes we get impatient with God’s timing, and try to make things happen on our own as Abraham did.

Sometimes we try doing things God’s way, but things still don’t seem to be going well, so we just give up and go back to doing things our own way.

But God says, “Let go. Trust me. And I’ll take care of the rest.”

We are to trust him in our relationships, in our job situations, in our financial situations, in everything.

And as we do, we’ll start to find his blessing.