A Servant on Assignment

When I came to the spring today, I said, “Lord, God of my master Abraham, if you will, please grant success to the journey on which I have come.” Genesis 24:42

Abraham entrusted his servant Eliezer with the assignment of finding Isaac a wife in Harran, the land where he had come from. He wanted to choose carefully for Isaac because his son was a child of the covenant God had made with him.

Earlier in chapter 24, Abraham gives these instructions to Eliezer: “I want you to swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and the God of earth, that you will not get a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites. But go to my country and my own relatives and get a wife for my son Isaac.”

We can hear God’s preferences coming through Abraham’s words. These instructions were consistent with the covenant God had made with him. He knew where he should look for a spouse for his son who would have the right connections to Abraham in order to understand and accept his faith in God.

For as respected and trusted a servant as he was, Eliezer wrestled with the assignment Abraham gave him by asking a question, “What if the woman won’t come back with me?” His fear is that the desired wife won’t cooperate with the plan.

But Eliezer addresses the matter in prayer. He is keeping up a dialogue with God while also remembering his conversation with Abraham. Eliezer prays for three things: success, guidance, and intervention.

“Lord, if you will, grant success to the journey on which I have come.” Next is the guidance part of the prayer. “I am standing beside this spring. If the young woman comes out to draw water and I say to her, ‘please let me drink from your jar,’ and she says, ‘I’ll draw water for your camels too.’” This was Eliezer’s clue that God was involved. When the young woman showed this kind of generous character, Eliezer would interpret her actions as confirmation of God’s guidance.

Last comes the intervention part. When he recognizes the guidance of God, then he asks for God to act on behalf of his master. “Let her be the one the Lord has chosen for my master’s son.”

Eliezer makes prayer look easy, doesn’t he?

His interaction with Rebekah is so effortless, so natural, and yet so evidently of God. The natural is overlaid with the supernatural. No chance meeting. It was planned by God and was now taking place.

If you’re like me, you stand in awe of his ability to bring God’s plans to pass. It starts to raise questions about my own effectiveness in prayer. Why could Eliezer get his prayers answered when I cannot? What is he doing that I don’t do? How can I see success, God’s guidance, and his intervention when I pray?

There’s a classic little book on prayer that I appreciate written by a Norwegian man, O. Hallesby. He quotes I John 5. “And this is the boldness which we have toward God, that, if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions we ask of him.”

The apostle established the fact from his own prayer experience as well as that of his readers, that if we pray for anything according to the will of God, we already have what we pray for the moment we ask it. It is immediately sent from heaven on its way to us. We do not know exactly when it will arrive while we are asking for it, but those who have learned to know God through the Spirit of God have learned to leave this in his hands, and to live just as happily whether the answer arrives immediately or later.”

The key to confident and successful prayer is praying according to the will of God. This happens when we live in consistent obedience of following directions and submitting to instruction.

Eliezer is a great example of how to do that willingly and conscientiously. He is a faithful servant who does his master’s will by going on assignment to find a bride. This is a mission important to the master. He represents his master and speaks on his behalf by proclaiming his master’s message. The mission turns out to be successful. Because of his willingness to venture forth in faith, the master’s plan was accomplished and the promises of the covenant continued through the next generation.