Genesis 24:5-6 (NIV) The servant asked him, “What if the woman is unwilling to come back with me to this land? Shall I then take your son back to the country you came from?” “Make sure that you do not take my son back there,” Abraham said.

When Abraham was getting on in years and after Sarah died, he wanted to secure Isaac's future by getting a wife for him. So he gave this mission to a trusted servant and gave him specific instructions. He made him swear that he would not get a wife for Isaac from among the Canaanite women. Abraham wanted the servant to go back to Ur of the Chaldeans (the country of his origin) to get a wife from his relatives who were still living there. When the servant asked if he should take Isaac back there if he could not find a woman willing to go back with him, Abraham emphatically said no. He told him the same thing twice (Genesis 24:6, 8).

Why was Abraham so against the idea of having Isaac go back to his old country? After all, he didn't deem the women in Canaan worthy of marrying his son (they were worldly and evil) but thought enough of his family to get a wife for him from among them. He had not received any of the land that God had promised yet and even had to buy a plot of land at an exorbitant price to bury his wife, Sarah. Why not just release Isaac to go back among his relatives where it would at least be safe? It was because Abraham was driven by what God had promised. He had set his heart on not only believing God, but also on following through. God had told him that Canaan was the land of promise and that it was the place where he and his descendants would be blessed. He didn't even want to take the chance of sending Isaac back to his relatives to get his own wife so that he would not be tempted to stay. God had told Abraham to leave and leave he did. He was never going back because he had decided long before that he was going to follow God no matter what.

Life has its ups, downs, and twists and turns and often, we get thrown off from our purpose and from the path that the Lord has us on. When that happens, we are tempted to go back to where we came from. I'm not talking about a physical place primarily, although sometimes people do that. I'm talking about our mindset and even about our faith. Sometimes God allows things in your life that you just don't understand and you are tempted to just go back to the way that things were before you began to trust God and follow His plans for your life. When the disciples got totally discouraged after Jesus was crucified and buried, the first thing they thought of doing was to go back to fishing. As they were trying to make sense of everything that had happened, going back to what was familiar was the only thing that they could come up with. We are the same as them. When things get difficult, we sometimes try to go back to how we used to be and how we used to think. Abraham didn't do that and didn't even think of doing it. He was so adamant that he was going to believe God no matter what that he made his servant swear an oath that he would not take Isaac back to where he had come from. Abraham was going to move forward, not backwards. Let's learn from this faithful man of God and not let trouble, discouragement, disappointment or even a long delay in a promise that the Lord gave you to be fulfilled drive us to even think of going back to anything or anyplace where God brought us out of. Let's continue moving forward, even if it is only a few feet at a time so that we, like Abraham, can experience the blessing of God and become a conduit of that blessing to many people around us.

Pastor Joey Vazquez