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