I discovered recently that Genesis 12 and Hebrews 11 need each other. They tell the before and after of a man called out of obscurity to faithwalk before the God of all. This is not a casual thing, as we’ll see.
Not Knowing Where
Oswald Chambers said, “The people who are flippant and familiar are those who have never yet been introduced to Jesus Christ.” He also said that for those of us who approach God with familiarity and flippancy, it is doubtful whether we have even really stood in His presence.
It would be easy to remain flippant and casual toward God if it never cost us anything—that is, if things never got personal; if things never got real. But in the life of the disciple, there inevitably come times when things get real. There come times when we must go and do the one thing we’ve been begging God not to make us go and do. I’ve gone through this process enough times that I’m finally beginning to trust Him and His wisdom, and that’s taken more than thirty years.
Have you ever come to your senses and realized that you’re standing right in the middle of the construction zone of what will one day become a powerful testimony? This revelation isn’t an easy one to take. It feels like life and death. There’s no room in it for being familiar, casual, or flippant with God because you can barely breathe, you’re being stretched so hard.
When God called Abram in Genesis 12, He told him to go to the land He would show him. That is, Abram was to pack up, take both everything and everyone, and launch without a target. Who does that? If he was a planner like me, this was a significant hardship because without a clearly defined destination, once you’ve launched, there’s no way to know when you’ve landed. Therefore the only peace you’re going to be able to enjoy has to come through faith that God finishes what He starts.
We get the landing part of the story in Hebrews 11, where we’re instructed that Abram “went out, not knowing where he was going” (v8). We’re told that he lived by faith in the land God had promised to him “as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents…” (v9). Can you imagine what that must have been like? He left comfort, security, and stability to wander aimlessly in a land of hostiles as a guest/intruder. It was unfamiliar. He had nowhere to rest his head, put down roots, build his business, plant something for posterity, or get settled. This is a challenging existence, even for those who are called to it.
The Impracticality of Faith
Faith isn’t supposed to be efficient. There is not, nor is there supposed to be, a metric by which we can measure its effectiveness. There is no way mankind can slap a price tag on it or assign a nominal value to it. I think this is one big reason why it’s one of the primary delivery vehicles God has chosen for the revelation of His Kingdom to us.
If it was going to take forty years of wandering to release Israel from Egyptian bondage, faith wasn’t concerned with what we might call wasting time. If a 3,000 mile journey from Ur to Canaan was actually closer to 10,000 and included a foray into Egypt—which was decidedly not on the way—faith didn’t obsess over the odometer reading. And while it’s true that God gives good gifts and wants to settle His children in a good land, if that means they’re living out of their luggage for a decade or two, faith is settled on the goodness of God, not the goodness of all the houses they pass by on their tour. Perhaps, faith surmises, God is showing us something, and we need to pay attention instead of complaining. Maybe as we pass through and see the fat of the land, we ought to be taking notes because who knows what God will do? This places the focus squarely on God, not His gifts.
Faith isn’t concerned with efficiency, it’s concerned with obedience. Faith knows that when God speaks a word and reveals a plan to work toward an end, that goal might be well after the physical death of the one He revealed it to. Christians must do their work expecting that all reward, release, and breakthrough might very well be posthumous: What God spoke to Abram only began to be fulfilled in his great-grandchildren’s generation. Are we prepared to be that patient?
Eternal Rewards
Faith isn’t about prosperity or comfort that can be measured. Ministry isn’t about how many people came forward, raised a hand, or got baptized. We are working for the God who is so awesome that He chose to reveal Himself through all that He made, and I think it’s because if we were to behold Him as He is, the revelation would destroy us (He did warn Moses that no one could see Him and live). Therefore, we have those breathtaking moments in life when we’re standing on the rim of a canyon that makes us know indeed how small we are. We feel our heart pound in the face of a storm so powerful that we can’t believe our eyes as it bears down on us, and we cry out to God for help and intervention. We walk through a forest in a whole new context and weep for its simple beauty.
These things are not quantifiable. I cannot measure the benefit that accrues to me when I am standing in the presence of God. I cannot explain how, sometimes, when I read the word, my physical hunger is sated. And I cannot tell you, really, how it is possible for a family like us to move from Idaho to Tennessee with nothing but the goodwill and generosity of God’s people in our hands. All I know is that we live in Nashville now, and it’s a bit for us like it was for Abram in Hebrews 11: uncomfortable, going from place to place unsure of whether or not we’ve really landed yet. Can I measure anything about that? Can you? It really is a terrible thing to come to rest in the hand of God. Every detail has deep meaning then.
I sincerely hope that one day I can finally turn loose of all my ideas about how God is going to fulfill this or that promise. It’s not in the interest of efficiency, although it would be more efficient to simply trust Him and stop flailing my way through life. It’s more about realizing I’m being taken to school and surrendering to that process. I’ve never known God to remove anyone from the process. It’s just a closer walk with Him, and that means, on the steep bits, we’re obsessed with the next step and have little bandwidth left for the big picture. There’s so much pain from the climb that we’re often simply pissed off that we even have to do it, and keep on doing it. We don’t care where He’s taking us, we just want it to end. But there is a voice behind us saying, “This is the way, walk in it.” I think He’s right behind us, like a father keeping a small child from falling, guiding gently, wanting us to see the view ahead unobstructed.
If there are moments of agony, there are also moments of reprieve wherein we breathe and rest and discover rhythms of growth. We may even delight to find that we’re stronger now in certain areas where we were once weak. And by faith we know that there is more. Much more. We don’t see it with our eyes, and we cannot receive it with these corrupt hands, but we know that one day, when time has gasped its last and expired, we will stand on the shore of something we never could have imagined. Yet when we’re there, we’ll know what we’ve been made for, and we’ll know we’re home.
Meanwhile
If you’re in a place like this—caught between promise and fulfillment—all I can tell you is that God doesn’t change, He keeps His promises, and it’s always worth the wait. Sometimes we get blindsided by seasons of patient endurance instead of breakthrough. If that’s what’s up, know that you’re able to endure it but that you have no hope apart from the Good Shepherd. There may be tempting and distracting possibilities roundabout, but keep pressing on, remind yourself of all God spoke before you got to the place of testing, and stay on course by keeping your nose in His Book.
There are seasons wherein we must become trailbreakers. In those times, God gives us the tools for that work. In other seasons we make clearings for houses and fields, we build dwellings and vineyards. In still others we tend what was built, and in still others, we go out to make peace by waging war and come in to recover. Through it all, God is God, and we are not. I can’t wait to see what He does next.
Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright (c) 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.