Second Guessing God's Answer

This morning I sat down in the moments before the "getting-ready-for-school" frenzy hit our house and started my daily bible reading. Part of my reading was in Genesis 24 where Abraham sends his head servant to find a wife for Isaac. It's an interesting story but for the sake of time and typing I'll give you the Reader's Digest version of the story. Abraham sends his servant back to the land of Abraham's family in search of a wife for Isaac. When the servant arrives in town, he prays asking for God to reveal Isaac's wife to him using a very specific phrase that he wants to hear from the would-be wife. A beautiful young woman named Rebekah comes to get water at the well and says the phrase the servant prayed to hear. Rebekah ends up leaving her home and traveling with the servant to marry Isaac. The rest is history.

Now this sounds like a nice story about God's provision for Abraham and ultimately Isaac. We see God's sovereign hand orchestrating the events to bring Rebekah to the land of Canaan so she can marry Isaac and help to start the nation of Israel. But as I was reading something stuck out to me that I had never noticed about the story before. In the story, the servant prayed that when he asked for water from a woman at the well that the one for Isaac would offer water and offer to water his camels as well. When Rebekah approaches the well she says all the right things. Then it says in Genesis 24:20-21, "She quickly emptied her jug into the trough and hurried to the well again to draw water. She drew water for all his camels while the man silently watched her to see whether or not the Lord had made his journey a success." The interesting thing that sticks out here is that this man had prayed for a specific thing, God had answered the prayer as the man wished, and yet the man still second guessed God's answer.

Typically when it comes to our second guessing of God's answers to prayers, we generally do so when God doesn't answer a prayer like we wanted. Sometimes God's answers to our prayers can, like the servant in the story, seem almost too good to be true. When something seems too good to be true, we usually don't trust it for that very reason. So how do we keep from second guessing God's answers to our prayers, whether we get the answer we want or not? The answer comes down to faith in God. I feel confident that God is more than accustomed to being second guessed by humanity. But when we wish to move beyond second guessing we have to step out in faith and trust God's answer is the right one for us. It's about putting our faith in the one giving us the answer. There have been times where we've talked to our boys and told them that they just have to simply trust us and that our answer is best. Yes, we get second guessed but in the end our boys have to trust us and put faith in us that our answer is right. 

God wants us to grow in our relationship with Him and part of doing that is exercising an increasing amount of faith and trust in Him. As we do we will find Him faithful, just, and right in all that He does. So the next time you think about second guessing God, take a leap of faith and put your trust in His answer.


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