Genesis 12:1-3
Abram’s call to Faith
Abram, or Abraham as he will later be called, is the father of faith. Christians become descendants of Abraham because we, like him, believe God and trust and thus do what God says. True belief is followed by action according to what we believe.
God told Abram to leave his country, his relatives and his father’s house, and go to a place that God would show him. The Apostle Paul says we walk by faith and not by sight. (2 Corinthians 5:7) That is what God called Abram to do and he did it, trusting that God would direct his steps along the journey.
In order for Abram to start the Journey he had to leave some things behind, and so do we.
The word “country” in the Hebrew is earth as opposed to heaven. Abram had to understand that there is more to life than what this earth has to offer. The temptation we face is that we think, or we are taught, that life on this earth is all there is and thus we try to carve out a little portion of it and work hard to make it our own personal heaven. We do this by faith because this is what we believe, which brings us to the second thing Abram had to leave behind, his relatives.
Think of relatives as the peer group or the popular, but ever changing, thinking of the culture and the people around us. How much of what we know and believe about life is based on this group? Again, how we conduct ourselves in this world is based on our faith placed in this group.
Abram was to also leave his father’s house. The greatest source of our beliefs comes from our immediate family. After all, they are the ones who raised us, trained us, and were our examples of how to live life. Abram’s father had set out to the land of Canaan but stopped short, choosing to dwell in Haran until he died. Abram had a brother who died in the presence of his father. His name was Haran. (Genesis 11:28) Could it be that Abram’s father was living in the past grieving the loss of his son? We don’t know. But, what we do know is that God told Abram to leave Haran because he had something better in store for Abram.
As we progress through our study on the life of Abram, we will see that he was not perfect. He had some lapses. He took matters into his own hands on several occasions and suffered the consequences of his sins. Ultimately his faith was in God because he believed the Lord and the Lord credited it to him as righteousness. (Genesis 15:6)
God does not require us to be sinless or perfect. He has given each of us a measure of faith and wants us to put that faith in Him, trusting that He will guide us every step of the way as we journey in this life which ultimately leads to our dwelling in heaven with Him. Where we have put our faith will be evident by the things we do or say. Some of these things we will need to leave behind, but the promise is worth the so called sacrifice we are asked to make.
May God bless your Journey!
Pastor Dave