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Just Start Walking

 

Just start walking...Perhaps this was Abram's (later Abraham's) motto, as seemingly out of nowhere, God called him, asking him to do something that, in my mind's eye, seemed to require a lot of a foreigner to God- one who did not even know who God was, let alone follow Him. Yet that is precisely what happened.

Scripture never tells us what went on between the asking and the following. Oh, to be a fly on the wall between God's call and Abram's decision! I can imagine the family conversations, the weighing in or out of such an offer. The risk involved and the obscurity of this promise from a God unknown to Him. Yet Abram followed God right out of his comfort zone to a place he had never been, let alone heard of, all on the premise that God had chosen Abram to make him a great nation with descendants would be so vast that they would not be able to be measured by the grains of sand on the beach or the number of stars in the sky.


I would like to know if Abram had any reservations. Did he ask around if anyone knew this "God" who had called him to do such a risky thing? Did he wrestle with the difference between uncertainty and irresponsibility? I mean to get up and leave everything? Did he have one of those? Should I stay, or should I go? moments. Then a game-changer entered the picture. If Abram was weighing the options, this could have sealed the deal. God revealed that he would also give them a homeland with one caveat - Abram would never enter the homeland - only his descendants would inherit the land. Yet, decision time was at hand.


Even without access to the conversations or thoughts swirling about in Abram's mind, he obeyed God.

and decided to go with God, whatever this adventure would mean; Abram got up and just started walking. There were bumps in the road, and times when Abram forgot who was leading the mission, such as the little white lie told in Egypt, to endure a famine, and a self-made plan to have a long-awaited child that later divided a nation. Both purely human moments, such times showed they were ordinary people trying to follow God, sometimes forgetting they were following God's plan, not making the plan themselves. Even amid the blunders of this couple, the interruptions they caused, and the consequences that followed, God saw Abram's faithfulness and called him righteous. The faithfulness, not the perfection, of this man, called out, led to fulfilling the plan of God for a great nation from which would come the Messiah, Jesus, all because Abram just started walking.


Friends, trust in the One who makes the plans.


 By faith, Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.  By faith, he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. 


Hebrews 11:8-10 (NIV)

 And so, from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.


Hebrews 11:12 (NIV)

Our faith can't be sustained through plans but rather by trusting the One who makes the plans.

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