Blog 10:
Welcome back to those of you who have been reading my posts from the beginning…it has been a long hiatus but here we are. I’d like to blame COVID since that is the en vogue thing to do but really it’s been complacency. I’ve got nothing to blame but myself. The story of Abraham is one that has been at the forefront of my mind for awhile now due to some changes that have taken place in my life so I think it would be healthy for me (and hopefully helpful for you) to look at some aspects of His calling and response over the next few posts.
As I went back and re-read Abraham’s initial call in the book of Genesis I found it interesting that it was actually his father that began the journey from “Ur of the Chaldeans” to Canaan in chapter 11. Generally when I have heard about Abraham’s call we start with the promises God makes to him in chapter 12 but it was extremely enlightening to me to see that his father, Terah had already begun the journey toward Canaan. The text is not clear if Terah had received a call from God to relocate to Canaan or if he just decided it was time for his family to start a new adventure but we do read that he only made it about halfway, to a city called Haran, before he stopped the group and settled down. There is no explanation given in the text as to why he stopped, but he and his entourage stayed in Haran until he died.
It is at this point that God comes to Abraham (I know he is Abram at this point but for simplicity’s sake I am going to just use the name Abraham throughout these posts) and tells him to restart the journey to Canaan. Whether Terah had been called by God to start the journey or not, Abraham is receiving his own unique and individual call from God to take his family to Canaan. This is an important distinction as we attempt to discern the call of God on our own lives…seldom will our call simply be picking up someone else’s call. The Hebrew in 12:1b emphasizes that God is calling Abraham to do this thing (go to Canaan) for himself (literally “you yourself go forth from your country…” ), rather than simply finish what his father had started. It is critical to realize that our Godly calling does not come from anyone other than God…others may point us in the right direction or confirm the call He has given but He alone is the author of the call. Just as the faith of our fathers is not our own faith, the call of our fathers is not our own call.
This has been personally important for me recently as I have been considering God’s call in my life. I am certain that He has called me into full-time ministry but what that has looked like has been decidedly less clear. There have been multiple ways I have attempted to discern what the end role I am supposed to fill entails with varying degrees of success. This is how I have differed from Abraham; whereas Abraham was satisfied with simply hearing the call to go to Canaan and obeyed I have gotten caught up in the “what next?” aspect of my call. This is what it would have looked like if Abraham knew his call was to go to Canaan but got hung up on what he was going to be doing when he got there. God didn’t explain what He meant by the promises he gave Abraham at the beginning of chapter 12 but Abraham didn’t concern himself with the details; he just went to Canaan. It was about 10 months ago when I finally stopped trying to discern every detail of God’s call in my life and just acted in obedience to the call itself.
As many of you know my family and I relocated across country moving from Arizona to New Hampshire a couple of months ago. The conversations that laid the groundwork for this transition began last October when a wise friend of mine suggested coming onto a church staff as a volunteer associate pastor for the sole purpose of gaining more ministry experience to put on my resume. My attempts at getting hired on as full-time staff were not proving fruitful so I considered my friend’s advice and realized the value in it…not so much for resume building, but rather for building faith in God’s call on my life. I was so focused on getting hired on somewhere that I was losing sight of the simple call that God wanted me to follow His direction into the ministry He has prepared for me…I was more worried about figuring out what I was going to do in Canaan than I was in simply going to Canaan. This realization opened my eyes to an opportunity to serve alongside a trusted minister of the Gospel at Candia Congregational Church in New Hampshire. As I sit at my desk now almost 3000 miles removed from my previous life and friends from the past 18 years I cannot help but feel an affinity for what Abraham must have felt as he headed to Canaan leaving behind the things and people he knew and loved. The beautiful truth is I have experienced God stretching me more for ministry in the two short months we have been out here than in the last two years. Rather than trying to provide a ministry opportunity for myself I am simply making myself available for the opportunities that God has for me.
As I mentioned at the beginning, I pray this has been a helpful conversation for you to be encouraged to simply follow the call of God…it has certainly been helpful for me to work through it in this way. Don’t wait for Him to spell it all out and don’t try to figure it out for Him; just go! You may be thinking, “OK, I’ll go but how do I really know it is God telling me to go?” That my friends is the topic for my next post so if you haven’t figured it out by then maybe we can try and unpack that together. Until then, stay safe and God Bless!