Willfully Follow

 Let’s look at Genesis 12:1.

 

12 Now the Lord had said to Abram:

“Get out of your country,
From your family
And from your father’s house,
To a land that I will show you.
² I will make you a great nation;
I will bless you
And make your name great;
And you shall be a blessing.
³ I will bless those who bless you,
And I will curse him who curses you;
And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

 

God spoke to Abram and said, “I want you to leave the place where you are; leave your house and your family” (paraphrased). Some of you can identify with that type of calling. God said that He wanted Abram to leave where he was in order to get to where He wanted to take him.

 

Now, this is going to sound oversimplified, but we can never get to where we’re going if we’re not willing to leave where we are. That’s an amazing truth. Man, that’s deep, eh? We can’t become what God wants us to become if we’re determined to stay the way we are. Even in regard to our behavior, if we are more attached to the way we currently are than we are attracted to what God wants us to be, then we’ll never change. The thing that needs to take place is that we need to become miserable with the way we are.

 

As long as we’re content with our “normal,” then we’ll never be determined to move in a new direction! Are you getting that? This is important! Some people are content being miserable, go figure. How do I know? Because they never change! All it takes is a simple adjustment. My wife and I sometimes just want to shake people and say, “If you’d just make this little change, you will see a significant difference.”

 

Many times they want to hold on to the old dry bone when God has fresh meat for them. It takes an element of faith. Change requires faith; fear keeps us locked into where we are. Why do the majority of people whom God has called to a foreign land not go? Many times it’s because they’re afraid, or sometimes it’s because they’re in such financial bondage that they feel they could never do it. I’m here to tell you that if you’re determined to go, God will provide the mechanism, the method, and the means, and you’ll end up with the result that God wants you to have! It may not happen the way we think it should.

 

Basically, in order to experience this greater level of grace that Abraham exemplified, we have to learn to willfully follow. Abraham willfully followed! By the way, as far as I can tell, Abraham was the first person in the Bible to whom God truly revealed Himself. He had obviously spoken and revealed Himself in various ways to others, but Abraham’s was a fuller revelation of God Almighty. Whew! That’s pretty cool. What would have happened if Abraham had chosen not to willfully follow? I want you to understand that there’s a seven-fold blessing that is attached to Abraham’s obedience, and you can read it in the passage above.

 

Today, we are here as Abraham’s seed. What qualifies us to be a son or daughter of Abraham? I’ll tell you what: FAITH! Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. He had to be willing to exit his former lifestyle in order to enter into the blessing that God had prepared for him. There were challenges! We’re all familiar with some of the challenges in Abraham’s life from Pharaoh to Sodom and Gomorrah.

 

Think it not strange; there are going to be situations that seem very difficult! God never promised that there wouldn’t be any trials and tribulations. He said to count it all joy! Why? You can count it all joy because He is with you, and He’s called you to be more than a conqueror in Christ Jesus!

 

Grace and peace,

pg

Greater Grace

If we will dare to believe God, we will experience new levels of grace. You do not experience new levels of grace or glory by laboring harder. There’s this mentality that Christians have to press into God. I know because I used to be one who “pressed in” and preached about it. Thank God, the longer I have walked with Him, the more I have learned! If I feel like I have to work harder to experience a greater grace, then I have lost the true definition of it.

Experiencing a greater grace comes one way: a greater “willingness” on my part. That’s it! There has to be a more complete yielding. It is not the result of my pressing in harder; it is the result of my “letting go.” A greater measure of grace will be experienced in my life as I have a greater willingness to follow and to let go.

I’m not advocating that you should minimize your work for the Kingdom of God or become slack in providing sustenance. I believe in work, but I believe in grace even more! We can obtain the blessing of God through grace. I also believe that the slothful, lazy hand will lead to poverty; the diligent hand will be fruitful.

However, when we’re talking about experiencing a greater grace, we need to go back to the first principles. How were we saved? We were saved by grace and not by works lest anyone should boast. We don’t experience a greater grace because we’ve served God for a long time, worked harder, or spit and sweat more. We may try to cry out, pray in tongues, or scream and stomp. Noooo! See, many folks who think that deceive themselves. They believe they’re receiving a greater grace based upon their own efforts. As mentioned previously, that belief defies the definition of grace.

We will experience a greater grace as we demonstrate a greater willingness to follow. Jesus’ commands were very cut and clear that in order to follow, it’s going to require something of us. What it requires is letting go of that which is old in order to grab hold of something that is new. It requires leaving where we are in order to get to where God wants us to be.

We’re going to have to exit where we are in order to enter where we’re going. How we exit oftentimes determines how we enter. As one who’s been involved in church life for a number of years and in pastoral ministry for over twenty-five years, I’ve discovered more about people’s character in how they left than how they came in. How we leave or exit oftentimes determines how we enter.

We could apply this to relationships. Let’s say you’re single, not married, and you were engaged to someone, and it gets called off. Your heart was broken (even though maybe you kept the ring). If you’re not careful, your heart could get hardened and become closed. You might say, “I will never let another man into my heart again.” I’m just using that as an example.

Some people have a bad relationship with their earthly father. They might have had an abusive, hard, alcoholic parent who beat them and didn’t treat them right and know how to love, etc. As a result, when the “injured” individual enters into a relationship with God the Father, it may seem difficult to develop a deep trust because they could never trust their earthly dad.

Another example of exiting and entering might include going to church on any given Sunday. You may even fight all the way there, but once you step over that threshold, the holy smile and attitude comes on. All the while, there may be an undercurrent of, “All Hades is going to break loose when we get back in that car, honey. Isn’t God good? Hallelujah.” Then we resume the “discussion” when we get back in the car.

Considering all of the things that we’ve looked at today, let’s determine to be decisive in making some changes for the start of this new year. Hopefully, we will make a decision to leave some things in the past in order to enter into a more glorious, grace-filled future. That part of it is up to us!

Grace and peace,
pg