In the Upper Story, God creates the Lower Story. His vision is to come down and be with us in a beautiful garden. The first two people reject God’s vision and are escorted from paradise. Their decision introduces sin into the human race and keeps us from community with God. At this moment, God gives a promise and launches a plan to get us back. The rest of the Bible is God’s story of how He kept that promise and made it possible for us to enter a loving relationship with Him.

SUMMARY

“I will.” These are words of covenant commitment and promise spoken by a sovereign God to Abraham. God’s master plan to restore us to Himself gets a fresh start with these words. God is determined to fulfill His promise in spite of the frailties and failures of His people. God chooses to create a new nation through Abraham, revealing Himself to and working through this new community of faith.  God promises Abraham saying “I will…”  make your descendants into a great nation, give this nation a land in which to dwell, bless all other nations through the nation of Israel.

And two thousand years later God’s Son was born, a descendant of Abraham, thus fulfilling the covenant promise.

This chapter demonstrates a striking duality: God using broken people to fulfill His unbreakable 
promises. But on a day-to-day basis, God’s people continue to make bad choices that expose their ever-present sin nature. But what sin changes, faith overcomes. In spite of their failures, God’s people respond in faith. With every story, we are reminded that God works through flawed people who take steps of faith.

QUESTIONS

1. Share a time when someone important in your life made a promise to you and kept it. Was there a time when someone failed to keep a promise? What was the result?
2. Chapter 2 opens with God calling Abram to make the sacrifice of leaving a comfortable life: homeland, friends, family and steady income. Describe an experience when God has called you to do something similar. What was required of you to obey His instructions? What were the results?
3. God chose Abraham and his descendants to represent Him to others who did not yet know God. What parallels can you draw between Israel and the Church today?
4. Abraham and Sarah waited years for God to fulfill His promise of a child. Have you waited for a long period of time for God to act in a given situation? Are you waiting on something now? (Share the circumstance only if you are comfortable.) How might this biblical example serve to encourage you? How can the group best pray for you?
5. God asked Abraham to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, for two reasons. First, to test his faith, and second, to point to the future sacrifice of the heavenly Father’s only Son. Is there an area of your life that God is calling you to “sacrifice” or entrust to Him? Identify the next step you need to take. 
6. The maidservant Hagar fled from Sarah’s harsh treatment. Alone, hurting and in despair, God saw her. But she also saw him and declared, “I have now seen the One who sees me.” When have you seen God most vividly acting in your life when despair and pain were present? 
7. In the midst of a deep, personal crisis in Jacob’s life, we read about a curious struggle in the wilderness (p. 23). In the end, Jacob’s name was changed to Israel because he struggled with God and man and overcame. (In the ancient world, a name represented the character of a person.) Identify a crisis in your own life that entailed “wrestling” with God. If God was to change your name to represent the outcome, what do you suppose it would be?
8. Nearly everyone has experienced the playground process of “choosing teams.” Compare the way God chooses his “team” with the way you choose your “team.” Who is one person in your life you need to see from God’s perspective instead of from a limited human perspective? What one change can you make in relating to this person that will help to change your perspective?

TAKE AWAY

God was ready to create a nation of people that would be his own.  But this nation would need to be established upon a relationship of obedience and trust.  These are the same characteristics that should reflect our relationship with God today.

PRAYER

Father, thank you for the people you have placed in our lives who are a model of faith for us. You call each of us, at various times, to follow you in ways that are risky and demand trust and faith. We confess we’ve missed opportunities in the past to step out in faith. Forgive us for those times and strengthen us to be willing to do whatever you ask. When you call, help us to sense where you might be leading and to take a bold step of faith, following you with confidence. We pray for your strength. In Jesus’ name, Amen.