Abraham lived in the day of Amraphel, king of Shinar, who was better known as Hammurabi. Hammurabi was one of the first to codify the law in Babylon. If you were to read those laws, you would be shocked at the injustices that were perpetrated in those days.
It was back in those ancient times that the Lord made the following covenant with Abraham: After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, “Do not fear, Abram, I am a shield to you; your reward shall be very great.” The King James Version says, “I am your shield and your exceeding great reward.” And Abram said, “O Lord God, what wilt Thou give me, since I am childless…?” Genesis 15:1–2. At this time God entered into the covenant with Abraham and promised him that he would have a child. Notice that from the very beginning, the Lord had to become certain things to Abraham. This is true today also. The Lord has to become certain things to you.
It is the men who experience great difficulties in their lives who have the greatest revelation of the Lord. A person who spends the greater part of his life secluded in a monastery will not necessarily learn much about the Lord. When God finds a man after His own heart, He thrusts him into a place of great responsibility, where he faces overwhelming odds and where there are mountains to cross and seas to part. God brings every difficult circumstance imaginable.
Sometimes it seems as if God is trying to torture those who love Him, but that is not so. He wants to reveal Himself to them, and He reveals Himself through the difficult circumstances. In the Psalms we see how David constantly looked to the Lord, saying, “God is a fortress. God is a refuge. He is my strength and my salvation. He is my high tower, my shield, my buckler.” In the midst of his difficulties he had to have that revelation.
Likewise, God will place you in a situation where He becomes more to you in your thinking than He is now. The barriers in your thinking must be brought down so that the revelation of the Lord’s greatness can come forth to you. The psalmist David wrote, Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the Lord delivereth him out of them all. Psalm 34:19. In delivering a righteous man, God becomes something great to him. David had much experience in walking with God, and he learned what God wanted. When he was an old man, he said, “I have set the Lord always before me. I will not be moved” (Psalm 16:8). In every situation he faced, he learned that God wanted to become more important to him than anything else.
Slowly but surely, the man of faith turns his focus away from his circumstances and his troubles and sets his eyes upon the Lord.
The young believer goes from crisis to crisis; the older believer goes from glory to glory, because the Lord is revealed to him. Instead of stumbling around for a while, it is much better to learn right away that the Lord wants to become many things to you.
God said to Abraham, “I am your shield.” He had to be that. Abraham walked with God, traveling over some of the most dangerous terrain of ancient times—from the Fertile Crescent, in the area of Babylon, on to Hebron and throughout Palestine, and even on down to Egypt. Wild tribes who roamed the area plundered the caravans that passed through. There were frequent wars between the nations and tribes who inhabited the land.
Do not think that Abraham was just a peaceful shepherd wandering around. When the four kings of the east joined together into a formidable army and conquered Sodom and the cities of the plain, they captured Abraham’s nephew Lot. Abraham pursued them and defeated them with his own standing army of 318 trained servants. One of those kings was Hammurabi. Only a few verses in Genesis 14 describe this event, but they tell us a great deal about Abraham—what a man of faith he really was. God was his shield.
Abraham plundered these kings, but He would take no reward for it. He told the king of Sodom, “I will not take even a shoelace from you, lest you say that you made Abraham rich” (Genesis 14:23). It was God who had made him rich. Because God was his shield and his exceeding great reward, Abraham did not look to anyone else for anything. In all the pictures God paints for you in His Word, He is telling you to do the same thing. Open your heart to see what He wants to be to you. Let Him be your shield and your reward.
God’s provision of immunity does not mean that you will not be assaulted; it means that you do not have to accept the assault. To a great extent, you can determine the level you will live on. Moses understood this when he sang, Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Psalm 90:1. You can decide where you will live. If you are living in the midst of troubles, change your address. Declare that the Lord is your dwelling place. In the midst of everything that assails you, God wants you to know that He loves you. He wants to be special to you.
Deuteronomy 34 records the end of Moses’ life, when he went up to Mount Nebo and the Lord showed him all the land of promise before He took him. Chapter 33 ends with the last song of Moses in which he told Israel what God had become to him. “There is none like the God of Jeshurun” (Israel), “who rides the heavens to your help, and through the skies in His majesty. The eternal God is a dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms; and He drove out the enemy from before you, and said, ‘Destroy!’ So Israel dwells in security, the fountain of Jacob secluded, in a land of grain and new wine; His heavens also drop down dew. Blessed are you, O Israel; who is like you, a people saved by the Lord, who is the shield of your help, and the sword of your majesty! So your enemies shall cringe before you, and you shall tread upon their high places.” Deuteronomy 33:26–29. That is the farewell song of a captain who had had many mighty experiences. His time of leading Israel was over; Joshua would lead them on into Canaan. However, the song of Moses was not a song of defeat; it was a song of victory.
Do you have many battles? Rejoice. That is the way the Lord shows off. God likes to attract attention to Himself. He is justified in being everything that He forbids you to be. He will not allow you to be jealous, but He Himself is very jealous. He wants all the glory for Himself, and He is entitled to it. Everything must center in Him.
As you become acquainted with Him, you begin to realize what your relationship is to be. Do not think that He wants to be less to you; He wants to be more and more. He does not want to be merely a silent partner who just lives in your house. He wants to be the head of your house. He wants to be your house—your dwelling place. His supreme desire is to be everything to you. Can you understand how much the Lord loves you and how much He wants to show Himself strong in your behalf? He is always looking for a way to show that you are not unimportant.
What is your concept of walking with God? Too many Christians have the idea that unless they read the Word for an hour and pray for an hour every day, they are not being very spiritual. However, many of those prayers miss God completely. Some people try to be spiritual advisors to God. They think that being a man of prayer means being God’s informer; they tell Him what is wrong with everyone and give their own personal opinions and advice about what should be done. Other people pray like pigs that are caught in a fence—they squeal and whine to God about their circumstances. Still others pray beggar’s prayers. They beg God to pass a special resolution by which He can give them something which the Word repeatedly tells them He has already given. Why pray prayers that miss God?
The issue is not how much you read the Word and pray; the issue is how much you apply, how much you really believe. If you believe what the Word says about His relationship to you and your relationship to Him, then you are praying with faith; you are praying well. When you fail to appropriate the Lord in every situation, you become assaulted by the fact that you have too much to do and too many problems that you do not know how to solve. As you go about the business of doing the will of God, you are praying well if you appropriate God into every problem you encounter. That is a more acceptable prayer life than retreating somewhere and exercising yourself in all those other kinds of prayers.
It is true that you must have time alone to wait upon the Lord and to learn His voice. By waiting on Him, you will learn many things that you can never learn in any other way. However, you must also learn that your time spent in waiting upon Him is not to be an independent action of your life, but an action that is mingled in with the sum total of what you are. As you live, as you move, and as you walk, you can be waiting upon Him. Learn to be in tune with His presence continually and to wait upon Him continually. Then you can pray without ceasing, because you will understand the nature of prayer. You do not have to consciously focus on the Lord in order to pray without ceasing. Your spirit can constantly be drawing from the Lord, and aware of Him in everything you do. Then your life will be a life of prayer before the face of the Lord. It will come simply by appropriating what the Lord says He will be to you. He will be your exceeding great reward, your shield, your dwelling place. He will be the everlasting arms underneath you. He will be your strength, your high tower, your everything.
When you learn to appropriate the Lord for all of this, you will find that even in the midst of the busiest schedule, you can still walk with the Lord. God does not want to see how much work you can do or what kind of record you can set; He wants you to walk with Him. Walking with God may produce an almost unbelievable labor load, but that is incidental. That is God’s problem. You must appropriate Him for everything according to what He wants to be to you, in order that He can be greatly glorified through you.