Joshua Earman ~ Genesis 12:10-13:4   Sermon Quotes: Genesis 12:10-20 10 Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land. 11 When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarai his wife, “I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance, 12 and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me, but they will let you live. 13 Say you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake.” 14 When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. 15 And when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house. 16 And for her sake he dealt well with Abram; and he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male servants, female servants, female donkeys, and camels. 17 But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife. 18 So Pharaoh called Abram and said, “What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? 19 Why did you say, ‘She is my sister’, so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife; take her, and go.” 20 And Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him, and they sent him away with his wife and all that he had. Genesis 13:1-4 1 So Abram went up from Egypt, he and his wife and all that he had, and Lot with him, into the Negeb. 2 Now Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold. 3 And he journeyed on from the Negeb as far as Bethel to the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Ai, 4 to the place where he had made an altar at the first. And there Abram called upon the name of the Lord. The following quote is from a testimony by a woman named “Mary” (no last name given) from the book Walking with God through Pain and Suffering by Tim Keller. When she became a Christian, she had hoped her life would change and suffering would stop. She shares that her life has since been one of pain from relationships and suffering from a brain tumor. Looking back, she reflects: “Life has not changed. But God is changing me. What I discovered about heartaches and problems, especially the ones that are way beyond what we can handle, is that maybe those problems He does permit precisely because we CANNOT handle them or the pain and anxiety they cause. But He can. I think he wants us to realize that trusting Him to handle these situations is actually a gift, His gift of peace to us in the midst of craziness. Problems don’t disappear and life continues, but he replaces the sting of those heartaches with hope…. I have come to believe that life will not always be as it is now. I find even more comfort in being able to stop focusing on all the heartache, and focus on the One who will someday take heartache away completely and forever…”