Called to Trust

Today we are wrapping up our sermon series entitled “Called.” We have been allowing the book of Genesis to help us understand the various ways that God calls us in order to help us discover what God has called for us to do. You can find all of these sermons on our You Tube channel.

This week we show that we are called to “Trust God.” Our scripture comes from Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49. The words will be on the screen.

34 So he said, “I am Abraham’s servant. 35 The Lord has blessed my master abundantly, and he has become wealthy. He has given him sheep and cattle, silver and gold, male and female servants, and camels and donkeys. 36 My master’s wife Sarah has borne him a son in her old age, and he has given him everything he owns. 37 And my master made me swear an oath, and said, ‘You must not get a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, in whose land I live, 38 but go to my father’s family and to my own clan and get a wife for my son.’

42 “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. 43 See, I am standing beside this spring. If a young woman comes out to draw water and I say to her, “Please let me drink a little water from your jar,” 44 and if she says to me, “Drink, and I’ll draw water for your camels too,” let her be the one the Lord has chosen for my master’s son.’ 45 “Before I finished praying in my heart, Rebekah came out, with her jar on her shoulder. She went down to the spring and drew water, and I said to her, ‘Please give me a drink.’ 46 “She quickly lowered her jar from her shoulder and said, ‘Drink, and I’ll water your camels too.’ So I drank, and she watered the camels also. 47 “I asked her, ‘Whose daughter are you?’ “She said, ‘The daughter of Bethuel son of Nahor, whom Milkah bore to him.’ “Then I put the ring in her nose and the bracelets on her arms, 48 and I bowed down and worshiped the Lord. I praised the Lord, the God of my master Abraham, who had led me on the right road to get the granddaughter of my master’s brother for his son. 49 Now if you will show kindness and faithfulness to my master, tell me; and if not, tell me, so I may know which way to turn.”

Please pray with me…

We perform many firsts in our lives. The first time we walked. Our first day in school. Our first time driving a car. Our graduation from high school. Our first job…We can go on and on with the firsts that we have performed in our lives.

Firsts in our lives often have us exhibiting trust in either ourselves or those around us and sometimes both. Driving is a great example, when we are driving, we are not only trusting our own abilities but also the abilities of those around us.

We trust that oncoming traffic is not going to move into our lane. We trust that those behind us are going to stop at that light. We trust that someone will not run a red light and hit us as we enter the intersection. We have to have at least have some trust in those driving around us.

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Trust in God becomes a whole different form of trust. Trust in God involves faith. It involves us being willing to rely on God. We can look at the story of Thomas when he needed to see and touch Jesus’ wounds to believe.

Jesus responds to him “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Jesus acknowledges the difficulty that can arise to trust when we are relying on the one that we cannot see.

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Our scripture for today has our focus on a servant of Abraham who has been given the task to find a wife for Abraham’s son, Isaac.  What we have missed is that Abraham’s wife Sarah has passed away and Abraham is very old and he decides that before he dies, he needs to find a wife for Isaac.

Abraham is afraid that if he is not careful Isaac will choose a wife not from his people but from the people that currently reside around them. This leads Abraham to send his servant back to where Abraham’s journey originated in order for Isaac to have what Abraham would consider a proper wife. All of this matters because the servant wants clarification on what is to happen if he can’t find a wife for Isaac.

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It is an important starting point for us when we are focusing on trust. Trust does not mean that we aren’t going to ask questions. It is OK for us to want some clarification on what God is trying to accomplish and the part that we are to play in that endeavor.

Our first reading has a man named Ananias not only questioning God but basically asking God if he has lost his mind based off of what he is asking for Ananias to do. There was a man named Saul that was doing everything he could to stop the Jesus movement.

He was having people arrested. He was causing chaos throughout the region with the hope of ending what at that time would have been considered a sect of Judaism. Saul decided to leave Jerusalem and head to a new place in order to cause chaos at a new location.

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It is on his way to Damascus when scripture tells us that

“As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” 5 “Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.  “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. 6 “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”

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Saul is who God is asking Ananias to help. Can you see why Ananias was struggling that this was truly what God wanted him to do? He probably believed that this person would be better off left blind if not dead.

We might find ourselves sometimes wondering why God would want done what he desires for us to do. We may also be asking ourselves why God would choose me to do this action that I know I am not qualified to do. In case you didn’t know, Saul will eventually become Paul from scripture.

Paul will be the one who will go out into the world to those that were not Jewish. He would share the Gospel with them and in the end also end up writing most of what we call the New Testament.

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When we return to our main scripture, we have the servant ask the question and we discover the trust that Abraham has in God. He states that the servant will not be held responsible if the mission is not a success. That statement is preceded by an assurance that Abraham believes it will be a success because an angel of God will go with them.

Trust in God is a belief that we are not on our journey alone. Trusting in God is believing that if we are following the will of God, then God will be on the journey with us. God will help us be successful.

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This answer leads the servant to trust Abraham and through Abraham, God. He goes back to Nahor where Abraham’s journey had originated. He sees a spring that the women would go to in order to get water.

We have the servant praying, and in his prayer, he asks for a specific order of events to occur so that he can know that he will pick the correct person. A willingness to pray is another important aspect of trusting in God.

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We can question God about “why us?” but we also should remain in contact with God through prayer as we are fulfilling the calling he has given to us. Prayer is the best way for us to communicate with God.

I mention each Sunday during our prayer time that prayer should be a conversation between us and God. A conversation takes two entities speaking and listening. We are not called to just ask from God. We also need to be willing to listen to God.

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Our scripture is a recap of what happened due to the trust that Abraham and his servant placed in God. We have everything happen as the servant asked which allowed for him to be sure of who God desired to become the wife of Isaac.

We as the worldwide church have been given a mission by God. Jesus explained that mission as us needing to become his voice to the world. In our case we believe that is us becoming the voice of God to the Sharon Woods neighborhood.

We should be asking God about the ways that he desires for us to accomplish the calling that he has given to us. We need to be willing to spend time in prayer in order to allow us to listen to what God wants us to do for us to serve him both individually and as a church.

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What I have discovered is that for me things don’t work the same as they did for Abraham’s servant. I can attempt to set parameters for God to follow, but the situation tends to evolve into something else. This means that I have to go back to God to ask what he wants since he was not willing to have things work the way I want.

I say this so that you understand that how God works with us even when we are trusting in him can be different for each person. Just like hearing from God can occur differently than those around us, we also may find ourselves having to discover the best way for us to hear how God desires for us to accomplish the goal he has given to us.

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What we see from our two scriptures for today is the results that can occur when we are willing to trust God and choose to go and do what he desires for us to do. We see that being willing to go can allow us to be able to heal and can let us tell others about how God is at work in our lives.

Our first reading has Ananias question God due to who God desires for him to help. It had to take faith and trust for him to then be willing to help out someone who was harassing and arresting followers of Jesus and agreed when followers were killed.

What we can notice is that Saul went from being considered an enemy to those that were followers of Jesus to Ananias calling him “brother Saul.” He not only heals him from his blindness but also baptizes him, and Saul becomes filled with the Holy Spirit.

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Sometimes it can be through our actions that someone will choose to become a follower of Jesus. It is true that Saul had such a supernatural occurrence take place through Jesus speaking to him, but most people will not have that kind of experience.

We don’t serve people in order to let them know about Jesus, but we can pray that God will allow us the opportunity to spread his word to those that we meet. We have as a part of our mission statement a desire to meet and show the love of God to all people.

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Our main reading has the servant letting the family of Rebekah know that God has allowed for him to know that she is to be Issac’s wife. He gets to explain how he set the parameters and God responded by having the events occur as he had chosen.

We speak quite often of having a Jesus story. A 5-minute story that you can share if and when the opportunity presents itself. That is what happened in our scripture. The servant had a story to share of the miraculous work of God.

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If you have been with us throughout this series, you may remember that in week two we looked at being called to go. We spoke of the steps that it takes for someone to often be willing to go and fulfill the calling given to them by God.

It all begins with a willingness to believe in God and give our lives over to him. It is through this first step that we can find ourselves willing to hear from God. We believe and then we seek an understanding of who God is and what God expects from us.

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It is at this point that we begin listening for God. We have a desire to follow the will of God, and we begin to attempt to figure out what is the best way to hear from God. This can be when frustration creeps into our relationship with God and trust could begin to wane.

We hear of people that hear from God and we wonder why we haven’t heard from him. We find in last week’s sermon; we have to decipher what is the best way for us to hear from God. We have to figure out how to hear from God.

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If we eventually hear from God or even if we don’t we have to believe that God has put us on earth with a purpose. We may hear from God, but this can also derail our willingness to fulfill what God has called for us to do.

Trust in God is needed for each one of these steps, but it is a willingness to trust that God will be with us that usually can lead us to decide that we are going to do what God has called for us to do.

That is where we are today. A willingness to trust in God.  A willingness to take a step out in faith. We need to ask ourselves if we believe that God is with us. If not, we need to discover how we can grow in our trust in God.

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We grow in our trust in God through being connected to God and being connected to fellow followers of Jesus. We speak of this often but it can’t be said often enough. We stay connected to God through our willingness to spend time with God in prayer and scripture.

The more time that we spend with God the more likely we will be willing to trust that God is at work in our lives and in the world around us. The second is similar. We call it in our mission statement “growing in faith together.” A willingness to spend time hearing the stories of those around us.

Let us decide today and every day that we have become close enough to God to believe that he is with us. Let us allow our stories and the stories of those around us to help us become someone who will be willing to go and to serve God today and every day.

Let us pray…