The God of Abram Praise

The grace of God that calls us to be His own is also the grace of God that leads us in His particular way.  God called Abraham by grace while he was an idolater in Ur.  God called him to go where God would show Him, not where God told him in advance.  Abraham trusted the God of grace and followed.  Thomas Olivers in his great hymn “The God of Abraham Praise” reminds us that the God who both called and led Abraham will still lead us today. 

At my dad’s funeral I intertwined the majestic and hopeful words of this hymn with my sermon.  My dad died of Alzheimer’s disease.  He hardly knew anything at the time he died.  If he remembered the name of God he could not say it.  Verse 4 of this hymn declares, however, that by His great grace God remembers us and His promises to us.  “He by Himself has sworn; I on His oath depend, I shall, on eagle wings up borne to Heav’n ascend. I shall behold His face; I shall His power adore, and sing the wonders of His grace forevermore.”

We all are called to follow God to the end He has chosen for us.  For some, like my dad, that somewhere might be the emptiness of Alzheimer’s.  It might be a land of vacant mind and vague memories.  It might be the utter loneliness of being in a land where you don’t even know yourself.  But God knows.  God has led.  God will keep.  The end of Abraham’s journey was as much in the care and grace of God as the beginning.  All the mighty deeds along the way; all the practice of faith in times of trial; all the triumphant victories of God displayed before our eyes can fade into a blank of nothingness, but God has not done so.  He is still the God who led us out from the darkness of sin into His brilliant light of hope.  That light still shines.  Those promises still hold. The God of Abraham is still leading and caring until our earthly end.  Then the great God of Abraham, in the marvelous revelation of His grace, will reveal to us the Promised Land. 

We are not forsaken.  We are remembered by our God. We are remembered by the God who called Abraham.  Sing these words of Thomas Olivers with great hope. “The God of Abraham praise, whose all sufficient grace shall guide me all my happy days, in all my ways.
He calls a worm His friend, He calls Himself my God! And He shall save me to the end, thro’ Jesus’ blood.”

For quality inspirational, educational, and fictional Christian books visit www.davidccraig.net