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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] What if your next breakthrough was tied to instructions that God would never give you?
[00:00:06] Today we're actually going to unpack Abram or Abraham, the father of the faith, and what he did in the hall of Faith. God does design us to fit. He designs us to be impactful.
[00:00:21] Hey, I'm Ryan. Welcome to Ships and Ladders. We've been walking on this journey through the hall of Faith, talking about Abel, Enoch and Noah. And now we are at the man, the father of faith, Abraham. A little bit about him. Let's give you some context. Abraham is considered the father of three world religions, the Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
[00:00:48] I'll drop a link in here to kind of show you kind of the branches of Abraham's lineage from a spiritual perspective.
[00:00:57] But it provides us a little bit of context because in that area of the Middle east, all of these world religions kind of resolve around this, this area, and all of them descended from Abraham. So we're going to break it down a little bit, but we're going to go to Hebrews, chapter 11. I'm going to read one verse, verse eight. And it says this by faith. And Abraham obeyed when he was called to go into a place which he would later receive as an inheritance.
[00:01:31] He went out not knowing where he was going.
[00:01:35] So we're going to talk about obedience.
[00:01:40] Obedience. Faith is obedience.
[00:01:46] We usually challenge those who give us instructions.
[00:01:51] It's just that what we do, we fact check people. We don't trust easy these days.
[00:01:56] Obviously, people have not given us a lot to trust in based on their actions, words and associations. But God can be trusted. The Bible says that God is not a man, that he should lie. Therefore, when he says something, you can take it to the bank and cash it.
[00:02:14] It's going to go through.
[00:02:16] So Abraham is told, as you can see here, that he's like, I need to go to a land.
[00:02:23] God tells him to leave where he's going.
[00:02:27] But in order to really get what's going on, we need to go to where this part of the story listed out in Hebrews 11, verse 8 is found. And it's actually found in Genesis Again, chapter 12. And we're going to start at verse one. We're going to read about four verses. So it says this.
[00:02:45] Now, the Lord said to Abram, go from your country, your family and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless them who bless you and curse him who curses you, and in you, all families of the earth will be blessed. Blessed. So Abram departed as the Lord had spoken to him, and Lot went with him.
[00:03:17] Abraham was 75 years old when he departed Haran.
[00:03:23] Abraham took Sarai, his wife, Lot, his brother's son, and all the possession they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Haran. And they set out for the land of Canaan. They came to the land of Canaan.
[00:03:39] Okay, so that's, that's actually another verse. So it's actually verse five verses.
[00:03:46] So first things first.
[00:03:49] Faith responds without information.
[00:03:53] So we've kind of talked about this. But in verse one, there isn't anything leading. If you read the verse before, there's nothing indicating that Abram had any preconceived notion. Like there was no, hey, I'm warming you up to hear from God literally says, now the Lord said to Abram, nothing, no backdrop. He just says, hey, I'm going to need you to leave your country, your family and your father's house to go to a place that I'm going to show you. So let me tell you what Abraham was required to lose.
[00:04:36] His country, his nationality.
[00:04:39] Number two, he asked God told him to leave his heritage behind.
[00:04:45] And number three, he said, I need you to leave your comfort behind, his nationality, his heritage and his comfort for a land that, that I'm going to show you. Now, if you, if you got directions to go to a place that you're going to be shown, the first thing I'm going to ask is, okay, what's the route?
[00:05:11] Do I need to take 70? Do I need to take 71? What highway do I need to take? What street do I need to take? The biggest thing we are concerned about is not just the destination. The destination is helpful, but it doesn't help help us. We need to know what the destination is in context to where we are.
[00:05:32] What's the route to get there? Do I need to take highway? Do I need to take the street? Do I need to jump here? Do I need to jump there? What do I need to do in order to get from point A to point B? And this is where we get stuck.
[00:05:49] We have to know how to instead of trusting who said it and what's at the end of it.
[00:05:57] The Bible says this, do not despise. This is Zachariah, chapter 4, verse 10 says, do not despise the day of small beginnings, for the Lord takes joy to see the work begin.
[00:06:09] The plumb line in Zerubbabel's hand. It means that just getting going is an act of faith.
[00:06:18] Obeying without information is obedience.
[00:06:24] It is when you don't have Google Maps or anything like that.
[00:06:29] You have to trust, and you have to trust in God.
[00:06:37] After leaving what you've known, that's the hardest thing, y'. All.
[00:06:44] The familiar is what gets us caught up the most. I'm talking to myself here.
[00:06:49] This whole faith journey is coming from my life right now.
[00:06:53] I never knew what faith entailed until we started. Like, I know what faith. We know what faith is like. Oh, yeah, we believe. I have faith that it's going to work out. Yeah. But faith here requires some substance. It requires obedience. It requires intimacy. It requires sacrifice.
[00:07:12] These are all the things that Abraham is actually exercising right here for a promise that doesn't even look like what he said.
[00:07:24] Abraham is 75 years old, y', all, and has no children, and his wife is just as old.
[00:07:31] How in the world is that going to happen?
[00:07:36] And this is what happens when we start trying to help out God, God and stuff. Okay, so I'm going to say this part. We're going to go to the second piece here. Obedience reveals God's will for your life, and specifically it reveals your alignment to God's will. Okay. When you do what God has asked you to do, it just begins to be revealed as you walk it out. So we talk about this in verse four. He says, so Abraham, Abram, excuse me, departed as the Lord had spoken to him, and Lot went with him, and he was 75 years old, and he departed Haran. And he says all of this as soon as he starts walking.
[00:08:18] It says this.
[00:08:22] They set out for the land of Canaan. They came to the land of Canaan.
[00:08:30] Doesn't say how.
[00:08:31] It says they left for it. They came to it. Doesn't say they went north. Doesn't say they went south, east, or west. It says they went to it and then they came to it.
[00:08:42] The in between didn't even matter.
[00:08:46] It was part of God's will for the matter to happen.
[00:08:51] So Abram or Abraham had enough faith to actually just get going.
[00:08:58] All he had was a promise from a God that he didn't hear until then based on what the word of God says right here.
[00:09:09] God spoke to him. He's like, well, shoot.
[00:09:13] It's not like he wasn't comfortable.
[00:09:17] It says they had a lot of things they acquired over the period of time. All they had. All he had was a word from God and he just went.
[00:09:29] So it's important for us to understand that. That, like that faith isn't just belief.
[00:09:36] It's behavior aligned with the belief God did. Abraham did what God said.
[00:09:45] Therefore it came to pass.
[00:09:51] Now this is the part 2.
[00:09:53] Delayed obedience is disobedience and incomplete obedience also disobedience.
[00:10:03] Okay, that hit me.
[00:10:06] If you don't do it halfway, if you do it halfway, you're disobedient. If you do it late, you're disobedient. If you don't respond, it's disobedient.
[00:10:14] Most of the time we call waiting for God, call it waiting for God, but really it's disobedience.
[00:10:21] Eek.
[00:10:23] All right, you can kick me later or kick yourself.
[00:10:28] When we say we are waiting for God or we're waiting for confirmation. God is so good, he'll give us what we need. But honestly, at the end of the day, his disobedience.
[00:10:40] We didn't have enough faith to just walk on the word that he already said.
[00:10:45] So I'm encouraging you. If you have felt like you've felt an unction from God, I think it might be best to just go and just start and see what gets revealed to you as you go.
[00:10:58] It may save you a lot of time, which is a resource that we cannot make up. But one thing that God can redeem if we walk things out the way he asked us to or what he's told us to do. Right. Okay, last one.
[00:11:14] The journey transforms before the promise is fulfilled. See, this is what happens. The future that God paints in front of Abraham is so compelling that it causes him to move now, even though the circumstances around what God said are not present yet, the future is much more, is much brighter. It is much more.
[00:11:42] It's driving someone. It's like.
[00:11:45] It's this promise that's like, I've got to see what this is going to look like because it sounds much better than what I'm currently in. So I feel this appetite, this pulling, to actually go and see what the end is going to be. So let me actually share with you what God said. He says this. I will make you a great nation.
[00:12:07] I will bless you and make your name great.
[00:12:12] Okay? So that you will be a blessing.
[00:12:17] So we've got that now. He says, I will bless them who bless you and curse him who curses you. And in you, all families of the earth will be blessed. That's a big promise.
[00:12:31] Is that a promise that causes you to move?
[00:12:35] For Abraham, yes.
[00:12:38] He had enough faith to say, you know what? Where I currently am, this future that God has painted for me is much bigger.
[00:12:47] Than what I'm currently experiencing.
[00:12:49] So he starts making the moves to just depart and see what happens. This guy is 75 years old. He really doesn't have anything to lose.
[00:13:01] For whatever reason, he thought, man, listen, I'm gonna die anyway. I'm 75 years old. I'm old.
[00:13:07] I should at least say, see what it could be.
[00:13:13] And that's what sometimes drives us or does not. Usually what we look at is what if it went wrong?
[00:13:21] We look at the negative side of it.
[00:13:24] But have we ever considered how is this going to look when it does work?
[00:13:30] That's faith in motion.
[00:13:33] Or we can be fearful and freeze.
[00:13:38] And it's just the question that we ask, that if we ask it in faith, what would this look like when it works versus what would this look like if it doesn't work?
[00:13:52] Very little word changes. Few word changes. One in faith, but one in fear could really change what we anticipate, specifically when we obey the word that God has said.
[00:14:09] Okay, so this is what I want us to go away with today.
[00:14:13] Faith and obedience go together.
[00:14:18] God says something. We need to believe what he says, but not just what he says. We have to believe in who said the word.
[00:14:31] All of these examples up to this point are based on who these individuals believed God to be. For them, the promises is dope. I mean, listen, I want to be. I'm going to make your name great. I'm going to bless those who bless you, curse him who curses you. I'm going to make you great. I'm going to make you a great nation. All that sounds good.
[00:14:55] If you don't know, if you don't know who's saying it and believe and trust who's saying it to you.
[00:15:03] These words can be null and void.
[00:15:06] I think about this.
[00:15:08] Oh, man, I'm throwing pins.
[00:15:11] Everyone has done this. But there's a fairy tale, I guess you call it fairy tale of the boy who cried wolf.
[00:15:19] Okay.
[00:15:21] Eventually, kid got ate up, right?
[00:15:24] Spoiler alert, kid got ate up.
[00:15:28] But what ended up happening was when he cried wolf and all the people came over and he's just making it up, by the way, every single time, his word had less weight, so he had nothing to stand on because he used up all the weight. And no one believed him when it really mattered.
[00:15:50] Because when he used his words, he misappropriated them and lied just to get a rise out of people.
[00:16:00] Now, if you have examples like the little boy who cried wolf in your life, I get it. It's hard to trust people.
[00:16:08] But God's not a man.
[00:16:11] God is going to bring to pass what he said he would do.
[00:16:17] So perhaps the reason why you haven't trust God is you think that he's like everybody else.
[00:16:23] He sounds like everybody else, but he isn't like everybody else though.
[00:16:29] So it doesn't take a whole lot. It just takes something to just walk out on. I have to remind myself often in my walk of faith and I forget it often, which is why God always has to tell us to remember, remember. And he says things multiple times in his word. It's not going. I have to remind myself this. It's not going to kill me.
[00:16:55] I hope it's not going to hurt me. If I just see what it would do and if it came from God and I just walked out and I was wrong.
[00:17:09] I have enough faith to know that maybe God could redeem the time and do in one year or in six months what would take somebody two or three years to do.
[00:17:26] I have faith. If I make a mistake, God is good enough to make me and help me get it right.
[00:17:34] I don't have any at this point in my life, I really don't have any other choice.
[00:17:41] I don't have a plan.
[00:17:43] I don't know if anybody's been there. They ran out of plans.
[00:17:48] Your backup plan, the backup plan got burnt up.
[00:17:53] And this is where God really wants us.
[00:17:55] When you have no plan, you don't have. You don't know where you're going to go.
[00:18:02] You either gotta go big or you gotta go home or stay home.
[00:18:07] Leave your nationality, leave your heritage, leave your comfort. I'm gonna show you someplace you don't know it's your inheritance yet. You'll figure that out later. I'll tell you later.
[00:18:20] But for this one, I just need you to step and leave.
[00:18:23] And when you do, this is what's gonna happen. But I'm not gonna tell you when.
[00:18:28] I just need you to have enough faith to just get started.
[00:18:34] I hope this was encouraging to somebody. If anyone is encouraging to myself, this is me. Preaching to me, teaching to me.
[00:18:44] Y' all happen to listen and watch, but if this blessed you share this with somebody who needs a jolt of faith.
[00:18:57] They might be discouraged, they might be hurting, they might be stressed.
[00:19:02] God is faithful.
[00:19:05] The only way we know it is if we go through it. So anyway, we have a lot more to go through and learn about the father of faith, Abraham. So keep it locked here. Subscribe on Apple, podcasts, Spotify, YouTube. We are going to get your faith increased by the word of God.
[00:19:24] Bible says faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Until next time. We'll catch you. Peace.
