It's About The Journey

Well, we are continuing our series, / / Ancient Faith for Modern Times, where we are going through Hebrews 11, and the stories of the Old Testament champions of faith, and how what they went through, or how they were faithful can give us some insight and guidance for our own lives of faith.

Faith, as I mentioned last week, is central to humanity. Not just to Christianity, but I believe all of humanity has faith in something. I honestly think everyone looks for something to worship, we just aren’t always good at what we choose to worship. And really, our inability to choose the right focus for our worship is why we have a lot of the problems we do today.

Paul says in Romans 1:19-24, speaking of the world, / / They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them. For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.

Yes, they knew God, but wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused. Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools. And instead of worshiping the glorious, ever-living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people and birds and animals and reptiles.

So God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desire.

Alright, we don’t need to go any further. You get the point.

What happened?

Paul argues that everyone knows there’s a God because all you need to really do is look around the world and see for yourself. How could this all be without a God?

Then what? They decided to not worship him.

Why not? If you know there’s a God, why wouldn’t you worship him? That’s exactly what Paul says in vs 21, / / Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him.

And I think the key is in the next part of that verse, / / “or even give him thanks.”

I think one of the easiest pitfalls to creating other gods starts with our desire to not want any god. Let’s call it what it is… Independence, our desire to do it ourselves. The desire to be our own person and not let anyone else tell us what to do, so we can just pick and choose what we want.

Even the furthest atheist I think is really just serving a god of their own design, even if that god is themselves.

See what Paul says, instead of worshiping the glorious, ever-living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people and birds and animals and reptiles.

I think that kind of covers the whole spectrum of what people worship.

We worship nature, or mother nature, or the planet, or the “universe”. We worship ourselves. We worship other human beings, celebrities, or looking for someone to save us. We worship substance, which Paul covers in saying they worshiped “idols”… things made with our hands.

And what’s the result?

I want to caution you here, in reading scripture, read with the understanding of how humanity works. I find sometimes when we read something like, “So God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desires.” We think, “Oh, God physically gave them over to evil or something...”

Not really. God didn’t make them do anything. God simply said, “Ok, if you don’t want to acknowledge me, or thank me, because you think you did it all, then I will let you figure it out yourself, and there are consequences for actions.”

But what we always have to remember, which isn’t always represented in a specific scripture, but IS represented in the breadth of scripture, is that God is always standing there with open arms saying, “But whenever you do want to return to me, I am here…” And with that in mind I want to say something and be careful saying it, because I think this is really important. When it comes to the people in your life that you know, that you might think are just so far gone, or even anti-Christian, evil even, or just so misguided or deceived…….have compassion.

Have compassion for them as human beings that God loves. I don’t mean accept their particular kind of crazy. I don’t mean accept sin as ok. I don’t mean accept whatever misguided or delusional truth they claim to be true. That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is have compassion on them!

What if an encounter with you, and Christ in you, the love of God through you, is exactly what they need to realize they’ve been chasing the wrong thing?

I don’t think a single person has ever been converted through a facebook rant or comment condemning someone’s actions. Arguments in person rarely, if ever, work.

Paul says in Romans 2:1, 4, so just a few verses later, / / You may think you can condemn such people, but you are just as bad…Don’t you see how wonderfully kind, tolerant, and patient God is with you? Does this mean nothing to you? Can’t you see that his kindness is intended to turn you from your sin.

The ESV says, / / God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance…

And we’ve looked at that before. The word repentance means to have a change of mind.

Which is brilliant because we receive the exact same encouragement as the world does when Paul writes later in his letter to Rome, Romans 12:2, / / Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.

Ahhh… true repentance, allowing GOD to be involved in the changing of our mind. Amazing how God wants to be involved in the whole process, right?

His kindness leads us to a place where we are open to maybe being wrong about life, or about God, or about things.

Then the Spirit, who is the Spirit of truth, can lead us into the truth where we choose to follow, as Jesus invites in Matthew 16:24, / / “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me.” So we lay down our own way, we lay down what we would have fought hard to defend, but now realize we may have been deceived, and we allow the Spirit of God to lead us to truth, taking on a new way, and as Jesus also says that when we hear his truth and obey it, that truth will set us free. When we are faithful to His teaching.

The journey is an incredible one, but it’s not always short! And depending on the area of our life that we are talking about, it might be a really slow road. I was in a meeting the other day with other pastors and one of our friends said she had recently started going to a therapist, and through conversation was realizing these things that she had simply been doing wrong for years and years. Even in the face of her husband telling her those things. And that’s another thing, we won’t go there, alright. But her confession was, and this isn’t word for word, but this is what I got from it, / / “If I had seen these things earlier I could have changed earlier, and if I would have changed earlier, I would have experienced this freedom earlier.”

Wow, talk about a really powerful statement.

So, all that to say two things.

/ / First, we all need faith in something, and that faith will either lead us toward the glorious, ever-living God who loves us and has good plans for us, or it will lead us to a place of denying him a place in our lives and unfortunately making place for a whole host of other things that will lead us to ruin.

And second, / / that there is no one too far gone, no matter what we might think or see, and it is the kindness of God that leads to repentance, and that if we are meant to be his hands and feet in this earth then we need to learn to be kind.

So, with all of that in mind I want to move on to the next hero of faith we are going to look at and so let’s read Hebrews 11:8-10, / / It was by faith that Abraham obeyed when God called him to leave home and go to another land that God would give him as his inheritance. He went without knowing where he was going. And even when he reached the land God promised him, he lived there by faith - for he was like a foreigner, living in tents. And so did Isaac and Jacob, who inherited the same promise. Abraham was confidently looking forward to a city with eternal foundations, a city designed and built by God.

Abraham, the father of Israel. The father of promise. The father of faith.

And although he wasn’t perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, through the course of his life he was faithful. In fact, if you read the whole story of Abraham, which spans from Genesis 11:27 all the way to Genesis 25:11, you’re going to see an absolute rollercoaster of questionable acts against true, deep faithfulness.

I want to make a very important point this morning and I want you to hear it and let it go so deep into your soul and heart this morning.

/ / The Journey is Not about being Perfect!

James says in James 3:2, / / Indeed, we all make many mistakes.

Paul says in Romans 3:23, / / For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.

When we read scripture we would be good to notice that these stories are full of failure, so that we don’t put a need for perfection on ourselves that we won’t ever be able to obtain. It’s just not possible. That doesn’t mean we don’t do everything we can to live righteously, in fact, I think that truly IS the point, that the love of Christ and the saving grace we receive through His sacrifice are meant to lead us to a life of righteous living, which produces a life of fruitfulness.

But what the story of Abraham shows us, among many other things, is that even though his life brought forth a lot of dysfunction and strife, it also brought forth the nation of Israel, the great heroes like King David, and ultimately through Abraham is the lineage of the savior of the world. So dysfunction or not, there’s that, right?

So, Hebrews 11:8-10 says that / / it was by faith that Abraham obeyed God. Well, remember last week, we looked at the fact that our faith often has an act attached to it. In fact, it’s James who says that faith without work is dead. And last week we read / / By faith Noah built at large boat - except it was by his hands and a whole lot of sweat and money and work that he built that boat. So faith is more than belief, we know that to be true through these stories.

/ / Faith is a belief that is meant to lead us to faithfulness.

It was because of Noah’s deep belief in a God he could not see, yet believed not only that he exists, but that he had called him to a great purpose for an event that no one had ever seen before, the world would be completely covered in water. So he set out to build something that had never been built before, a boat large enough to house him, his family and 2 of every kind of animal, to save them against the flood.

That’s what it means, All of that contained in these few words...by faith Noah built. He believed so deeply that he was compelled to action. His belief itself would not save him. That’s not an option. If he doesn’t build, he dies, and we never exist. Harsh, but true.

So, when it says that by faith Abraham obeyed God, what are we talking about here?

Well, let’s go back to the story of Abraham and read what this particular verse is talking about.

Genesis 12:1-9 says, / / The Lord had said to Abram, “Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land that I will show you. I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on earth will be blessed through you.”

So Abram departed as the Lord had instructed, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran. He took his wife, Sarai, his nephew Lot, and all his wealth - his livestock, and all the people he had taken into his household at Harlan - and headed for the land of Canaan. When he arrived in Canaan, Abram traveled through the land as far as Shechem. There he set up camp beside the oak of Moreh. At that time, the area was inhabited by Canaanites.

Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “I will give this land to your descendants.” And Abram built an alter there and dedicated it to the Lord, who had appeared to him. After that Abram traveled south and set up camp in the hill country, with Bethel to the west and Ai to the east. There he built another alter and dedicated it to the Lord, and he worship the Lord. Then Abram continued traveling south by stages toward the Negev.

Alright, this is what Hebrews 11:8-10 is talking about. Now, there’s plenty of times that scripture says God appears to Abraham, or at the time scripture is calling him Abram. God later changes his name. And I’ll probably refer to him as Abraham simply for cohesion instead of going back and forth. Hebrews does the same, right, it calls him Abraham, even though it’s talking about a time when his name was Abram.

So, lots of times it says that God appeared to Abraham, but in this first verse, Genesis 12:1, it simply says, / / The Lord had said to Abram. We don’t know how God said that. We don’t know what this particular encounter was like. We don’t know how significant this encounter was. What we do know is that it compelled Abraham to obey in action. Like his ancestor Noah understood that faith without works would produce the death of the human race, Abraham understood that faith without action would not lead him to the promise.

/ / “Leave your country…and go to the land that I will show you…”

There is a land that God wanted to show Abraham, but without going he would never see it.

So, the first thought I want to bring to you this morning is exactly that.

/ / 1. Obedience is Key

I know, this was a point from last week as well. It was point two, Noah Obeyed. But without obedience there is no promise fulfilled because the promise fulfilled is on the other side of action.

Let me say that again… / / Without obedience there is no promise fulfilled because the promise fulfilled is on the other side of action!

By faith Abraham obeyed…

Abraham, sitting there, hears God, “Leave your native country, I’ll show you where to go.”

“I believe you, Lord!”

But doesn’t go anywhere. Just sits there.

“Abraham, are you going to go? Didn’t God tell you to go somewhere?”

“Ya, ya, I know. I believe it. I’m just not ready yet. But I believe it. I have so much faith. Full of faith.”

“Right, but…. Don’t you need to go?”

“I think I’m good, ya know. I believe in God. I believe He’s a good God. I believe He’s a god of promise AND Keeping his promise. He doesn’t need to put conditions on his promises, that doesn’t sound very good, or kind, that just sounds like a transaction or something. He doesn’t need to do that - to make me do something so I can have something. What, am I a monkey that has to jump through hoops so God will bless me? He can bless me without me doing anything. He’s God!”

Now, one of two things is happening in this moment.

You’re either thinking, “That’s just silly…”

Or, you’re thinking, “Oh wow, I’m pretty sure I’ve said that before. Or at least I’ve lived it through my actions…”

God doesn’t need me to do …… so that he’ll do …….

If God wants to, He will bless me.

I don’t need to tithe, God will bless me.

I don’t need to forgive that person, that person doesn’t deserve my forgiveness… I’m going to hold on to my grudge… I’m so thankful God will forgive me.

I don’t need to be healthy… God will keep me safe…

I don’t need to be financially wise, planning for retirement, God will look after me…

It’s fine, it’s fine, God is in control…

Now, don’t worry, I’m just preaching to myself here. Honestly, I think this series is just for me. But, and I am not saying this as 100% of the time, because you have to hear this in context. When God has led you to something, told you to do something, or in scripture it outlines a method or path for something to happen in our lives…

Without obedience there can be no promise.

So, this great champion of faith, Abraham, recognizes that if he wants God to bless him as he has said he will, he better get up, pack up and hit the road, Jack!

Genesis 12:4 / / So Abram departed as the Lord had instructed…

That might as well say, “So Abraham exercised his faith!”

/ / 2. Faith requires following blindly, but following God does not require blind faith

Alright, what do I mean by that.

Hebrews 11:8, / / He went without knowing where he was going.

Genesis 11:5-6, / / …and headed for the land of Canaan. When he arrived in Canaan, Abram traveled through the land as far as Shechem. There he set up camp beside the oak of Moreh. At that time, the area was inhabited by Canaanites.

Interesting enough, and I hadn’t noticed this before. But Abraham’s journey actually starts with his father, Terah. Genesis 11:31, / / One day Torah took his son Abram, his daughter-in-law Sarai (his son Abram’s wife), and his grandson Lot (his son Haran’s child) and moved away from Ur of the Chaldeans. He was headed for the land of Canaan, but they stopped at Haran and settled there.

He was headed for Canaan… The land of promise…

Ur of the Chaldeans is close to the Persian Gulf, anywhere from 6-800 miles away from Haran, depending on which way you travel. Haran, at the time was trade city, so I don’t blame them. After 800 miles on foot I’d be ready to stop too. So they stop in this city, and it’s probably a decent place to live. There’s trade, there’s commerce. It would’ve probably been a prosperous place.

And when you know that context, you know what Abraham is now leaving - this adds to our story of faith. I’m going to make my next point but then come back to the one we are on.

/ / 3. Faith Isn’t comfortable

Let me say it this way. / / Faith is rarely comfortable...

So, there they are, in Haran, a decent city, doing well for themselves. It doesn’t say how long they were there. But we do know that Terah, Abraham’s father, was 70 years old when he started having children. That’s all scripture says. He was 70 when he became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Now, that only indicates that he was 70 when he had Abram if Abram is the oldest, but we don’t know if Abram is the oldest. And we also know that Abraham was old enough to be married to Sarai, and Haran was old enough to have had a son, because it mentions his son Lot, but also that he had died in Ur of the Chaldeans.

Here’s where it gets interesting. The last verse of chapter 11 says that Terah died in Haran at the age of 205. And the next date we are given is that that Abraham was 75 when God told him to leave Haran. This means that if Terah had Abraham when he was 70, and died at 205 in Haran, that means Abraham is 135 years old when his father dies - again, assuming Abraham was born first. Well, Abraham was 75 when God told him to leave Haran. So either Abraham isn’t the first born and Terah was 130 years or older when he has Abraham, OR he’s still alive when Abraham leaves Haran. The book of Acts seems to say that God spoke to Abraham while he was in Ur of the Chaldeans and lived in Haran until his father died, which is possible. Or Abraham is not just leaving his father’s family, as scripture says, but his father as well. Either way, his father has just died, or he’s leaving his father.

Now, I know how hard that is. Leaving your father’s house. I’ve done it three times. First when I was 19, when I moved to Toronto for school. Which wasn’t so bad, it wasn’t too far away, but it was my first time leaving home. The second time was quite a bit further, when I got married I left my home town and moved to California. That was a bit farther, and that was hard. I had actually been living with my brother at the time, which was a great season. And then a third time, after having moved back to the area, having lived less than an hour from my parents house, which is where we had Kaylee, and we saw my family often - that’s when God says, “move to Norway…”

Abraham and me agree, moving away from family is hard.

Ask my brother and my sister-in-law, how hard it is to leave your father’s city to follow the word of God for your life.

All of that to say, sometimes, not always, but sometimes faith calls us out of our comfort zone. Listen, it is very difficult to go to a new place when the place you are in is working for you.

Sure, when things are going terrible, and you’re ready to leave, and God says, “Go!” It’s like, “Alright, let’s do this.”

And that happens sometimes, right? Kelley and I have multiple stories of that. But, we also have times where God has called us to something when there’s no real reason to do it.

When we were living in California, we were doing really well. We were traveling 2-3 weeks a month, doing music, selling CDs, teaching and preaching all over the world, and then when we were at home we were off, no responsibility, just living in a surf town eating burgers by the beach. I’m tellin’ ya, it was the life.

And it’s in that place that I felt like God told us to leave California and move across the country to a city we’ve never even been to, Raleigh, NC, to help friends plant a church. I mean, we had no idea if that was going to work. Oh, and Kelley wasn’t 100% on that one either. It was me who really felt God’s leading, and Kelley was willing to follow what I was feeling.

And that’s a good point. Let’s not forget, Sarai went with Abraham too.

Alright, let’s jump back to the second point we were looking at.

/ / 2. Faith calls us to follow blindly, but following God doesn’t require blind faith.

What do I mean by that?

Well, as we can see, by faith Abraham obeyed. Meaning, he was willing to do something, not because he had a concrete idea of what he was going to do, but because of the one who told him to do it.

Think of a trust fall. You know that thing where someone stands in front of you, closes their eyes and you are like, “Don’t worry, I got you…” and they fall back and you gotta catch them?

That’s not blind faith. I have faith in YOU. You are going to catch me. I am not going to trust fall with someone I don’t know. I don’t trust you. I don’t know you. That is blind faith.

/ / Abraham might not know where he’s going, but he does knows who’s calling him there.

We can only assume that the stories of the patriarchs have been handed down through the family line. It’s commonly believed that Moses is the one who compiled and wrote the first 5 books of the Bible, what we call the Pentateuch, or the Torah. And probably did so while he was wandering around the desert for 40 years. He had some time on his hands.

Well, through all of the camp of Israel there were stories, maybe writings, we’re not 100% sure, but somehow Moses comes up with all of this information to write into a book. And here we are with what we now have.

But these stories would have had to pass through Abraham, which means he has heard the great stories of faith. He’s heard the story of Noah, that by faith Noah built an ark. And presumably he’s been given his faith through the life of his father, Terah. Let’s just pause there for a moment and recognize the importance of passing on a value and inheritance of faith to our children! No one else is going to do that for you. You have to pass on a legacy of faith.

So Abraham, having heard that it was by faith that Noah built an ark, chooses to obey, like his ancestors did. What I mean by that, and what is important here is to recognize that he has a deep, profound faith in something. Faith is not blind in the sense that it is in nothing. Our faith is in God, the creator of the universe.

Remember what we started with two weeks ago. The unchangeable things of God. When you settle for yourself these things, that God is who God is and it is worth having faith in him, then your faith is not blind, but you can follow in faith blindly because you trust the one that you have faith in.

Meaning, I don’t need all the details. I don’t need the rigid path. I don’t need all the answers. I might have questions. I might have doubts. I might wonder how on earth this is going to work, BUT, because of my faith in the ONE who is leading me, I will follow!

So Abraham sets out in faith. Not knowing where he is going.

And now our next point is possibly one of the most difficult things to process when it comes to faith.

/ / 4. Faithfulness isn’t dependent on the promise

Hebrews 11:9, / / And even when he reached the land God promised him, he lived there by faith - for he was like a foreigner, living in tents. And so did Isaac and Jacob, who inherited the same promise.

Introduce two new characters why don’t ya… Isaac and Jacob.

Well, as we go through the story, and we’ll get to these characters in the coming weeks, but Isaac is the promised son of Abraham, and Jacob is the son of Isaac. And Hebrews says that Abraham “lived there by faith” and so did Isaac and Jacob.

What does that mean?

If the promise is received there’s no faith involved anymore, right? Faith is believing in or for something you haven’t seen or experienced yet, but when you have it, when it’s realized, it doesn’t need faith anymore - because you have it.

If I have faith I am going to be healed, and then I am healed, I don’t need faith for that healing anymore, I have the healing.

If I have faith God will provide, and he does in fact provide, I don’t need faith for that provision anymore, I have the provision.

So Abraham travels by faith to a land he does not know where it is, God says, “stop” and he’s standing there and God says, “I’m going to give this land to your descendants.”

So he camps out and lives there. I mean, there’s more to the story than that. But essentially Abraham lives in the land of the promise, but it’s not his land, not truly. He’s there by faith because it’s the land promised through him to his ancestors.

Same with his son. Same with his son’s son.

That’s a long time with no actual promise received.

How long, you ask?

Paul writes in Galatians 3:17 that it was 430 years from the time God gave the promise to Abraham to the time the law was given to Moses, which is the moment Israel leaves slavery from Egypt and starts on their journey toward the promised land 40 years later.

More than 400 years before the promise is actually realized.

What am I getting at here?

Faithfulness isn’t about you receiving the promise, it’s about you being faithful to the one who gave the promise.

Let me say that another way, but in a question:

If you never receive the thing you are believing God to do in your life, will you be faithful til the day you die?

A lot of people can handle being faithful if they know there’s a payout in the end.

I’ll do this so I get this.

I’ll put up with this just as long as at the end we are going to get what we were promised.

But what if it doesn’t happen?

This is the promise of Abraham. / / It was by faith that Abraham obeyed when God called him to leave his home and go to another land that God would give him as his inheritance. He went without knowing where he was going. And even when he reached the land God promised him, he lived there by faith - for he was like a foreigner, living in tents.

Why was he a foreigner? Because it was never his. Not yet. Not for another 400 years.

Now, don’t let me get you discouraged or down here. You are not Abraham, or Noah, or Moses, or the great patriarchs of the faith. I’m not saying God has a 400 year plan for your life for a new nation to be born. That’s not what I’m saying.

If you remember a few weeks ago, I said that not everything we read in scripture is meant for us. I can’t look at the life of Abraham and say, “Ok, God will do that in me too.” But what we can do is look at the life of Abraham, look at the character of God represented through the story, and ask the very real question, is this character we are seeing consistent with the rest of scripture, and can we then ask if God would have like character and action toward us?

And that answer is yes. God speaks, God gives promise, and here’s the point I want to make from this part of Abraham’s story. / / The promises of God are not simply meant for you and your life, but they are meant for those around you and those who will come after you.

The generations matter. And simply put, our faithfulness has great impact on our generations.

And that’s not meant to be a burden, but it is meant to relay a responsibility.

Because the next part of that verse, after saying that Abraham was like a foreigner living in tents, says, / / And so did Isaac and Jacob, who inherited the same promise.

The story of the promise and the instruction of faithfulness is handed down to each generation so that the promise does not die. Each one looks forward to the promise fulfilled. Each one lives a life of faithfulness toward God. And still, we will probably come back to this verse more than once in the coming weeks - Hebrews 11:39 says, / / All these people earned a good reputation because of their faith, yet none of them received all that God had promised.

There are two things at work in the life of faith.

/ / Faithfulness produces a good reputation. Why? Because faithfulness is a life of righteousness, of honor, of integrity, of living rightly before God and living graciously toward humanity.

Proverbs 3:1-4 says, My child, never forget the things I have taught you. Store my commands in your heart. If you do this, you will live many years, and your life will be satisfying. Never let loyalty and kindness leave you! Tie them around your neck as a reminder. Write them deep within your heart. Then you will find favor with both God and people, and you will earn a good reputation.

Our faith should lead to a life of faithfulness that produces a harvest of a good reputation and a good life, regardless of whether or not we receive all of the promise we believe God has given.

And the second thing at work in the life of faith is this.

/ / We have been given the Promise, with a capital P, that we will spend eternity with Jesus Christ.

Abraham had a visitation from God, and the promise given, he walked by faith knowing that he had been called by God. He had a confidence. Sure, read his life, he didn’t do it all perfect, but he was blessed, he lived a really good life, and throughout his life he became more and more sure of the promise even though he did not have the physical representation of it.

In the same way, Ephesians 1:13-14 says, / / And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago. The Spirit is God’s guarantee that he will give us the inheritance he promised and that he has purchased us to be his own people. He did this so we would praise and glorify him.

Have we received the fulfillment of that promise?

No, what we have is the guarantee that he will give us the inheritance he promised, but we don’t step into the promise of eternal life until we step out of temporal life, right? Jesus said in John 11:25, / / “I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying. Everyone who lives in me and believes in me will never ever die.”

The ESV says it a little clearer maybe, / / “Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”

Basically saying, “If you die, don’t worry, you’ll live again, but if you are living when I come back, congratulations, you’ll never have to go through death.”

Ok, so, I want you to get two things from this morning, from looking at Abraham’s journey of faith.

/ / Like Abraham, we have a promise that we will not experience in this life, and it is THAT promise and THAT reality that we ultimately have faith in. We believe in a God that is eternal and we give our lives to honor and worship Him. That’s all those things we looked at in week 1 that make God who God is. We can’t change those things, so we have faith in him. Faith for a promise far beyond our lives. We will die without receiving that promise because that promise is literally on the other side of death.

For Abraham that looked like 400+ years of generations going through all kinds of things before they realized the promise God had given him.

For us that is being saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ and even though we die, we will live.

I’m not saying we don’t experience anything. There is plenty we experience. And we’ve received the Holy Spirit, what else could we want. But the reality is, eternal life in Jesus Christ is what the church has called for 2000 years, the Blessed Hope. It is something to come.

That faith, / / that promise, the character of God expressed through history and scripture should compel us to a life of faithfulness. Living after the things of God. Learning the way of God. Dedicating our lives, our resources, our time, efforts and energy to his purposes.

And like the life of Abraham, and as Proverbs 3 describes, when we live a life of faithfulness toward God and follow his ways, it creates a life of contentment and blessing and a good reputation.

So, I want to speak to something for a moment here.

If you have been believing for something, maybe for a long time, whether that is a healing physically, or emotionally, or a healing in a relationship; maybe you have been believing God for a new job, or a breakthrough at some point in your life. And it hasn’t happened. And your faith is struggling. Or maybe you’ve just decided that God won’t do it so you don’t have faith for it anymore.

I feel like God wants to do a reset in our faith this morning.

The bible says that Abraham looked forward to a city with eternal foundations… This is why he was able to be faithful, because regardless of whether he saw the fulfillment of the promise, he knew the God of the promise.

And so, where you maybe feel like you’ve been let down by faith. I believe God this morning wants to reorient that faith toward the eternal promise, so that regardless of what you experience in the immediate, and the temporal, your faith will not waver.

Because broken faith, or stressed faith makes living a life of faithfulness pretty hard.

When we feel let down by God, or like he’s taking too long, it can be very difficult to keep the faith. And that can affect our relationship with him, and affect our dedication to him.

If you feel in any way like that’s you. You haven’t seen yet what you are believing for, I want you to courageously lay that before God this morning. Take that hurt to God this morning. That disappointment. The questions. Maybe even the doubts and the lack of faith. Maybe you’ve even asked, “How can you be real if I don’t see you move?”

And it’s ok. God can handle the questions. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that asking the hard questions is wrong. It’s not. It’s what we’re meant to do. It’s part of our faith journey. Without the questions how are we going to come to a place of true belief. Remember, I said we don’t follow because of blind faith, our faith is in the God of the Universe that Paul says all it takes is to look around at nature and you see He is real. Let that faith rise up in you. Think of how intricately designed you are. How wonderfully and beautifully you were made. Think on the warmth of the sun and the smell of the ocean and the sounds of the forest and let yourself settle on, “Ya, I might not get it all, but I know God had a hand in all of this...”

You don’t have blind faith. Allow the Spirit of God to open your eyes to see His faithfulness toward you. Then allow yourself to follow Him blindly. Like Abraham, without knowing where you are going, simply that he’s called you to follow and that He’s given you instructions for this life through his word. Follow.

If you want to pray this with me I want to lead us through a prayer of releasing what we feel is broken, so we can embrace a faith that is unwavering and leads to faithfully following God...

Heavenly Father, I bring my broken faith to you this morning. I bring my disappointment to you this morning. Where I feel you haven’t done what I thought you would do. Where I am afraid to believe again. Where I am apprehensive to have faith. I give it all to you. And I ask that you would open my eyes to the eternal promise. That my faith in you would bring me to a life of living faithfully after you.

Now, just allow the Holy Spirit to reset your faith this morning, let the disappointment of faith not realized be washed away by the presence of the Holy Spirit who is the guarantee of the eternal promise, so that your faith will be strong in the God of the eternal promise.