And Abram heeded the voice of Sarai. (Gen 16,2)
Abram had already had the experience that it was blessed to obey God and to be in the place to which He had called him. He realized this strongly through his experience of going to Egypt. In doing so, he dealt with the problem of famine that had struck his country, but he recognized that it was wrong for him to act on his own and go where God had never sent him. He understood this only by the fruit that the trip brought - nothing positive except money. Its outcome, the shame he had to eat, the shock to his soul and his marriage, all of which he did not want to repeat. But it was also the first time he became aware of the strange silence that had fallen between him and God. In Egypt, the gradual revelation of God that had been growing in his life until then, stopped.
He acted simply under the pressure of circumstances, and so will many of us. But it is precious when we can then draw the right conclusion and, like Abram, no longer enter (our) Egypt.
I have stated before that faith is a struggle for the image of God in the heart of man. This image was broken by the fall and no man sees God correctly until he has gone through this struggle. Until then, he drowns in conscious and subconscious imaginations. But the true image of God is to be restored on earth, and that in the heart of His people. (It is also the only place where we can find it here!). This, however, is not automatic. Faith is accompanied by the trials of refining, for though it is victorious in nature (1J 5:4), there is no victory without struggle.
The descent into Egypt was foolishness on Abram's part, but now that he had begotten Ishmael with a slave woman, it was something far more serious - a real fall into the depths of unbelief. It was a very conscious and deliberate denial of what God had told him, and not long before confirmed by the blood shedding covenant. Did Abram believe that God could deceive him in this? Then he could deceive him any time. Then he certainly is not who he presents himself to be.
When the longed-for child did not come, God's image in Abram's heart received a serious crack. By his action, Abram judged God for not fulfilling his word, telling him that it was actually not the best thing that he had trusted Him and obeyed Him so far. His God, though real, is not entirely trustworthy, and so it is probably better for Abram to make his own arrangements in the most important matters.
