The Un-Series: Week 2 Day 1

Genesis 12:1-6

The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.

2 “I will make you into a great nation,
    and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
    and you will be a blessing.

3 I will bless those who bless you,
    and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
    will be blessed through you.”

4 So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran. 5 He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated, and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.

6 Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land.

The first mention of this “giant of the faith” reveals that he was an unknown pagan who was childless, and soon to be forgotten because he had no descendants to keep his name and memory of him living past his last breath. 

The reason we remember Abram is because of what we see in Genesis 12:4: “So Abram went, as the Lord had told him.”  Abram went, meaning that he obeyed God.  We live in an influencer generation where people are desperately trying to be known, heard, and seen. Faith does not mean you will be plucked from obscurity and made famous; it means that your life will be connected to the greatest story and triumph in all of history. Being connected to the story of God in Scripture is powerful and long-lasting. Look at this unknown man, Abram, yet even after almost four thousand years, we still talk about him and his family.

Obedience takes courage and often feels like risk because we cannot see from God’s perspective; we only see our limited view of the cosmos. God is calling us to trust that HE sees bigger, knows more, and has called us to participate in being part of His story of redemption. Being known by God as a man or woman who truly follows Him is the real goal of this life.